Spanish book project
This is the first year I try to read a book in Spanish with my classes. I must admit my students are fantastic!!! They are well motivated and they will get on with the work I set no matter what! I believe that if you are not immersed in a language 24 hours a day and if instead you only have language classes 3 or 4 times a week, then you should read as most as you can to improve your skills. By reading in a foreign language, your brain memorises the words, how they are spelled and also the syntax as it is very different from one language to another. You can start by reading children's books with few words and lots of pictures and then get on with "proper" books. The publishing company Difusión has a set of Spanish books graded according to the Common European framework of Reference for Languages. I decided to choose an A1 (equivalent to beginner level) book for my grade 7 students. The book is entitled Persecución en Madrid and it is about a group of friends and one boy who is involved in a robbery. There is plenty of action and lots of cultural elements related to Madrid. With the class, we tried to read one chapter every week. We would listen to the CD which goes with the book and we would translate the story in English. I didn't ask my students too many comprehension questions in Spanish, the objective was to show them that they could read a whole book in Spanish and understand it.
A colleague of mine who teaches English shared a project he does with his students when they finish reading a book. I thought it was a brilliant idea so when we finished reading the book, I gave my students a similar project to complete over a month period. They had to choose different written and spoken tasks related to the book. You can see the project guide attached to this post. My students loved this project because they were kind of free to choose what they wanted to do and at the end of the finished project, they were proud of what they had achieved. It was a positive experience and I shall continue to encourage my students to read in Spanish! What about you? How do you encourage your students to read in a foreign language?
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A colleague of mine who teaches English shared a project he does with his students when they finish reading a book. I thought it was a brilliant idea so when we finished reading the book, I gave my students a similar project to complete over a month period. They had to choose different written and spoken tasks related to the book. You can see the project guide attached to this post. My students loved this project because they were kind of free to choose what they wanted to do and at the end of the finished project, they were proud of what they had achieved. It was a positive experience and I shall continue to encourage my students to read in Spanish! What about you? How do you encourage your students to read in a foreign language?
