alice’s posterous

This week, we have been learning members of the family in Spanish with my students and how to describe them. An activity that went well and is based from the excellent textbook Gente Joven is to ask questions about other families.

1. Students write the names of 3 members of their family on a card. They go around the class with their cards and ask each other for each name on the card "¿Es tu madre/ padre/ abuelo...?" (Is he/she your mum/ dad/ grandad...?).
2. Students then stay with a partner. The partner chooses one person from the other's card and ask different questions about this person:
   ¿Cuántos años tiene?
   ¿Cómo es?
   ¿Qué le gusta?
   Whilst asking those questions, they write the answers down.
3. Students write a paragraph using their answers about their partner's member of the family. They memorize their paragraph. They go around the class telling each other about their partner's member of the family "Ellen tiene una hermana. Tiene trece años. Es rubia, alta y delgada. Tiene los ojos azules. Le gusta mucho leer y chatear con sus amigas pero no le gusta nada estudiar."

Students enjoyed finding out about other's families and telling the class about each other. It was also a good way to use verbs and expressions in the 3rd person a not only in the first person.

What about you? Have you used an engaging activity to teach family members in another language?

Loading mentions Retweet

In an attempt to get my Spanish students to practice their Spanish outside the classroom, I decided to set up a blog for them to be able to view, read and listen good stuff related to Spanish culture and language. To also share and view their work. The main objectives of this blog are for more students to keep up with their Spanish and to also make them share their views in the "comments" section. Especially when they listen or read other students' works, they will be able to compare, assess and see how work can be improved.

At my last school, I already set up a school blog using Edublogs. I chose http://edublogs.org/ because it was free and I suppose their tag line "Blogging for students and teachers made easy"! drew the attention on me. Nevertheless, it was not that easy to set up and at times, it took a long time to download resources.

My personal blog is with http://posterous.com/ and I find it so much easier to use, especially if you're not a geek :)
All you have to do is to write an email as your post (as I am doing now) and send it to Posterous. Posterous takes care of the rest. If you want to send a video, you attach it to the email or copy the URL into your email and Posterous will show the video in your post. If you want to send a picture, just copy the image location or attach it to your email. Again Posterous will show the picture in your post. If you want to send a slideshow or a document, attach it to your email, Posterous takes care of the rest.
I did a lot a recordings this year with students using a little microphone plugged into my laptop and Audacity. I save the recordings as .mp3 files and attach them to the emails I send to Posterous. Posterous insert the audio files into the new posts and this way, students can listen to their own recordings (which they looove!).
So far so good... They are not many comments made by students yet, but I know it takes a while and it is a learning process. The blog is http://spanishblog.posterous.com/ and of course, your comments are welcome as well :)

What about you? which platform do you use to blog and why?

Loading mentions Retweet