Two Approaches to Special Persons in My Classroom: Always a Winner!

Good day, teachers! We are all busy, so I will make this quick! I have just revised this Special Persons resource for my students and posted it on Teachers Pay Teachers Store: Teaching Spanish Made Easy! We just finished up our mini-unit on All About Me and this resource was a true hit! Here is why:

It’s super comprehensible!
It’s relevant!
It has a predictable order!

How do I engage students with this activity? I use the first page featured below for my level 1 students and the rest for upper-levels as it required a bit more prior knowledge.

Step by step in how to engage students with this resource

I give them a diagnostic! You can write the words on the board and ask them if they recognize any of them. Most of them are recognizable but some are not. One benefit of doing this is that when you present information about yourself, they will get it immediately, so it is a surefire confidence booster!
I provide information about myself, responding to each of the questions. You can write it on the board, in the slide deck, or however is best for your students. They usually guess. See some of my sample sentences below:
1. Mi aplicacación favorita es Youtube.
2. Mi serie favorita es Grey’s Anatomy.
3. Mi deporte favorito es fútbol.

Even though the word serie was a cognate to me, many of my students did not get it right away. Once I did this, they immediately understood, and that is the goal!

3. I ask them questions, and have them listen for keywords to figure out what type of information I am asking. For example, ¿Cúal es tu película favorita? Students identified “película.” There are little icons on the activity to give students a clue.

4. I also provided this Quizlet set for an expanded version to help them with structuring their responses to the activity.

5. Social Mixer! This is my favorite activity, and it’s super simple and not to mention a great way to bring attention to the third person in Spanish as well as the first person plural.

Have students create a chart 4 by 4 chart in their notebook. See the example I created in Google docs below. I write only a few questions on the board, we practice and then they are off to the races!

This is a simple way to focus on high-frequency vocabulary, structures, and get to your students! Enjoy!

Click here for the resource

Spanish 1+ Conversation Starters and Sentence Stems

These conversation starters can be used within the first week of class. Click on the link below to download your free copy. Click on the video below for a tutorial on how I approach this in my class.