Los Famosos (communicative activity)

Another favorite activity my students do with numbers is "Los famosos".  During their numbers unit, my 6th graders don't learn to tell time but they do learn to talk about numerical personal information like birthdays, ages, and phone numbers.  To wrap everything up and practice towards the end of the unit, we do this activity:

front of a card

Each student gets a card with a famous person from one of our three culture-focus countries for the trimester (Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica in 6th grade).  They are now this person :-) and have to exchange personal information (one-on-one) with the other "famosos" in the class.

Each two-sided card has the person's picture and name on the front and personal information on the back.  Students walk around the room holding the front facing out so they can read their "own" information on the back and their classmates can see "their" picture and name.

back of a card

The students always get such a big kick out of why they are famous!  The most excited students are always the presidents and the athletes, but I included a wide range of celebrities, from actors and musicians to artists and writers.  I also made sure to include people of all different ages; the "famosos" range in age from teenagers to 90-year-olds!

In addition to their numbers unit vocabulary, they get to review other personal information and learn new vocabulary about jobs from why their person is famous.  To give their personal information correctly, they have to remember other cultural/linguistic concepts from the unit such as date format (DAY/MONTH/year), years ("one thousand nine hundred sixty-three"), and phone numbers ("two hundred fifty-five, ninety-nine, fifty-eight").  Plus, they get to learn about famous people from our three countries!

While they are interviewing their classmates, the students have to fill out a chart to record their classmates' information.  As in the "turistas" activity, the chart guides students in asking the questions and ensures that they have to understand the information they hear.

chart to fill in

Like many other activities I've shared, this one is a winner because it gets included as an answer to both "What activities did you LIKE this most?" AND "What activities helped you LEARN the most?" on the end-of-unit survey!

Turistas (communicative activity)

Wow, it has taken me forever to finish writing about the activities from the numbers/Spain unit that I wanted to share!  This one is my favorite by far, and also a student favorite, which is always exciting.  Half of the students are "tourists" visiting Toledo, Spain and the other half are "tour guides" with information about famous sights in the city.  Each "tour guide" stands in a certain spot in the classroom and the "tourists" work their way around the room "visiting" different sights.  Halfway through, we switch roles so everybody gets to be a "tourist" and everybody gets to be a "tour guide".

My students get really excited when it's their turn to be "tour guides". The "tour guides" each have a card with a color picture of their designated sight on the front and a copy of a real tourist information sheet that I got when I visited Toledo.  Many of them get really into their role and do a great job of "marketing" to the tourists by calling out the name of their place, holding up the picture, etc.

front of a "tour guide" card

Information sheet on the back of each "tour guide" card

When the "tour guides" talk to a tourist, they hold up the card so the tourist can see the front of the card and they can see the information on the back.  Information about their place is highlighted so they can find it easily.  They have to use this information to answer questions from the tourists in Spanish.  Since all numbers are written numerically on the information sheet, the tour guides have to really use their numbers vocabulary (plus all the extra cultural concepts we've learned, such as how to say phone numbers, how to read 24-hour times, and how to say prices) as they give the information.

Here's the original information sheet with no highlighting, in case you want to use it!

The "tourists" have a table with all the questions to ask at the top and rows to fill in information as they visit each place.  They get to record the numbers numerically, which means they have to understand everything their tour guide tells them.  Since these are all useful questions that they might have to ask while traveling or planning a trip, it's really authentic listening and speaking practice.

In addition to being a fun activity because it gets the students out of their seats and interacting authentically, this activity is usually one of the most-repeated answers to "Which activities helped you LEARN the most?" on our end-of-unit survey.

I've created a similar activity for my 6th graders with places around Quito, Ecuador.  (It's a little simpler because they don't learn how to tell time, but it works the same way.)  It takes a little research to create for a place you haven't visited personally, but many cities now have tourist resources posted on their websites that could be used as the basis for activities like this.

En Sevilla... (pair speaking activity)

Last week I shared a writing activity my 7th graders do with places in Madrid.  I was hoping to share a few more of my favorite activities from that unit, but life got in the way, as it often does.  So finally, a few days late, here's another activity I'm proud of: "Sights in Sevilla".

In this partner activity, students ask and answer questions to exchange information about famous sights in Sevilla, Spain.  I used this authentic information sheet from my trip to Sevilla (it's from the back of a map) to create the activity.

original Sevilla info sheet

Partner A and Partner B each have modified information sheets with critical information blacked out for SOME of the sights. (Thus, A can see information that B can't see and vice versa.)

  

(Partner A & B info sheets w/ opposite blacked out info.)

Each student has to ask his/her partner for the missing information (related to our numbers/time vocab) about each designated sight: opening time, closing time, and phone number.  (i.e."What time does the Museo Taurino open?" etc. -- you can see an example above the chart screenshots below.)  To answer the partner's questions, the student must find the correct information about each of the partner's sights on the info sheet.  Of course, all asking & answering MUST be done in Spanish!  While listening to their partner's answers, students record the information (numerically) in the following charts:

Partner A's chart to fill in

Partner B's chart to fill in

After both students have exchanged all the information about their sights, I have them pick two sights that they'd like to visit.  They have to work together to write about what the sight is and why it's important / why they'd want to visit it.  As in the Madrid activity, I run a self-scrolling PowerPoint with pictures of Sevilla on the big screen throughout the activity.  And just like that activity, students really respond to the realia and enjoy learning about the sights much more than if they were just exchanging made-up numbers and times to practice vocabulary by itself!

I love info-gap activities for so many reasons:

• students have a real reason to communicate
• they get to ask/answer questions they might actually ask & answer in real life
• having a specific task to complete keeps them on-task 
• designing the activity around vocab they are practicing keeps them in the target language
• they get to practice both speaking and listening at the same time!
• since it's a pair activity, students often correct/help each other with language usage

In fact, I love them so much that my students end up rolling their eyes when it's time to do another one... but the vast majority of students always list them under "What helped you LEARN the most?" in our end-of-unit surveys!  (Even students who don't list them under "What activities did you LIKE the most?" -- although many students include them there as well!)

What's on in Madrid? (writing activity)

My 7th graders are currently working on numbers and time vocabulary.  During this unit, I've created lots of activities that integrate culture into language practice.  I'm really proud of these activities because they exemplify what I believe language learning should be: culture and language woven together.  Since one of my goals is to blog more about what goes on in my classroom, I'd like to share some of these activities.  (A quick note: all of these activities are about Spain because that's our current country focus in 7th grade. I do similar activities about Mexico and Ecuador with my 6th graders when they do numbers.)

Today's peek into my classroom: a writing activity based on a real guide of "What's on in Madrid?" that I got while I lived there. (You can download current and past issues of the pamphlet on the Madrid VCB webpage.  Be sure to check out all the other awesome resources on the page while you're there!) My students get to choose from several pages that I've copied for them from my pamphlet: such as "Museums and Parks" and "Food and Flamenco".

one of the guide pages my students can choose from

They choose several places from their pages that they are interested in and then must use the information to fill in a chart about each place: name / phone number / opening time / closing time / basic description.

Students fill in one row for each place they choose.

For this activity, I let them work individually, with a partner, or in a small group -- their choice.  Since all the numbers in the guide are written numerically, students have to practice their vocab to write out all the numbers in Spanish, as you can see from my example in the picture above.  In addition to the writing practice, they learn that saying phone numbers is different in Spanish-speaking countries than it is here (you have to use two-digit and 3-digit numbers) and that some Spanish-speaking countries use military time for schedules.  They also learn "a la/las..." for "at" a certain time (instead of "It's" a certain time right now).

And of course, they get to learn more about Madrid!  (We do this activity the day after we watch the part of a video about Spain that focuses on Madrid, so they have some background knowledge about the city.)  Students who choose "Museums/Parks" get a peek at some of the famous places to visit in Madrid, and the students who choose "Food/Flamenco" get to learn about Spanish foods from the restaurant descriptions.  I also run a self-scrolling slideshow with pictures of Madrid on the projector while they work so they can see more sights.

As with all culture-vocab combination activities I do, students are WAY more intensely engaged than if they were just practicing the language by itself!