Need challenging Spanish I activities for HS

[madre5]

Last year was my first year teaching Spanish I from the Realidades textbook at the high school level. Some of my students stated that the activities were repetitive and somewhat easy.:( This year I want to break away from some of the book activities and challenge my students through more speaking activities and the use of cultural music activities. Does anyone know where I might find resources? I welcome your ideas.

Gracias:)

[Unregistered]

Hello! I am currently going to school to be a Spanish teacher and I have accumulated alot of activities over my years of studying and preparing. Some great listening exercises are taking songs and putting a few blanks in the songs. Let the students listen to the song and fill in the blanks. This is learning to listen to the language correctly and teaching culture of music. Another speaking activity long with grammar is to ask each student around the room what he or she did over the weekend or will do (past and future tense). Let each student write down the sentences, then have a little mini quiz over whatever they did. This is also a great social activity that is controlled! Good luck!!

[Unregistered]

My two most invaluable resources are:


http://campus.northpark.edu/spanish/faculty2.htm

http://chs.advertisnet.com/enespanol.html


They're full of great ideas and activities that are incredibly easy to modify to fit your textbook - just delete their pictures/vocab and replace them with your own! You'll find several partnered speaking activities, especially on the second site.

Sometimes, to get my students up and moving, I do classwide "mixers". For this, I've created a large, blank grid numbered along the left-hand side. Then, along the top, I have my kids write down five different yes/no questions related to whatever we are studying. For example, if we're studying gustar, one student might write: ¿Te gusta nadar?, ¿A tu mejor amigo/a le gusta el chocolate?, ¿A tu madre/padre le gustan las películas?, etc. (I usually structure the requirements so that students aren't using the same subject or form of the verb all the time - Ex: you must use gusta twice, and gustan twice, the last is your choice). Once everyone is finished, students circulate throughout the room asking one another their questions. They record each person's name on the left side, then use a symbol to mark their classmates' responses in the appropriate columns. After 8-10 minutes, students return to their seats and I spend a few minutes asking, "¿Quién habló con (student's name)?" Of the students who raise their hand, I call on one of them and say, "Dime un poquito de (student's name)," and they relay a sentence based on their chart: "A Sandra no le gustan los deportes." I always involve myself in the classwide mixers, it's a great way to interact with my students and get to know them better.

I have also created speaking activities where students have to guess information about one another based on their interests/childhood/etc. I'd be more than happy to share any of these activities with you if you're interested.

I hope this helps!