Teaching fifth grade for the first time.

Clearly after 6 years I have gotten used to teaching 7th grade and this year I'll be taking on the 5th grade Spanish classes. I want to have them come up with the classroom rules, review methods and  make nice posters that we could leave in their class for the year, as well as introducing some of the essential vocab they will need to function in the class. 

So, in order to do the latter ,I've used Canva to make a Dobble game with the following vocab. 
I will actually use the Dobble game in the second lesson as we have a lot of admin stuff to go through first. 
To introduce these 13 words I use my smartboard and chopped the content into 4 chunks

• I start with lapiz, pegante, bolígrafo and tijeras.

I do a True or false, Is it spelt correctly, What do you call this, and finally a what is missing.

• Then, I add paper and notebook I' m hoping some will know on or the other. 
• Then we move on to phrases I or the students can say, the first four,  match up, what picture to I use to express... 
• And for the last three I actually will ask them to do the gesture and tell me what they think i'm trying to get them to understand with these, we will discuss when we are going to use sit down etc, 
• We finish on recapping all of them and stick the worksheet in their book so they can review at home. 

French 8>9 review course. Practicing verbs without being bored

How to review verbs on a 2 hour week long course on various topics without doing the same activity again and again. I love white boards and may ask them to use them too but for now I'm just going to use these activities.
Here is my choice to get the kids engaged, speaking, writing and using the three tenses.

Verb conjugation quiz

The wheel of conjugaisons ( they will also love putting them together)

Spaghetti Questions ( let's get the guillotine ready)

Board game includes positive , negative and tenses cards

Verb challenge , rolling three dice : one tells you the tense, one tells you the subject and the one tells you the verb
TPT FREE resource Spanish https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spanish-Dice-verb-challenge-Stem-changing-verbs-ER-verbs-and-Estar-4155724

French verb practice Beginner French some irregular verbs
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Verb-challenge-French-dice-game-ER-IR-RE-verbs-including-irregulars-4156071
French three tense resource Advanced https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/French-Verb-challenge-dice-game-3-tense-practice-Passe-compose-futur-present-4166445

Starters for the new year...word challenge / Bonus Spelling bee prompts

7th graders coming back from three months vacation... They will not remember much about conjugating verbs and such so this game is more focused on the vocabulary and expressing likes and dislikes or even more complicated working on the accuracy or du/de la/des vs un/une/ des
As a pair students will roll two dice the first one for the like and positive sentences and the second one for dislike or negative sentence. This way they are also reminded of how to combine two opinions in one sentence.
This can be played as a Speaking with no notes, a writing one white boards and once they have completed a certain number of sentences I would come and check for accuracy, paired cooperative task or paired competition task. 
Also, I plan on printing this grid to cut the pictures out and use them as the spelling bee prompts. 
Obviously, as per the other resources posted on this blog, I continue to use Canva.com and icons from Flaticon to create these resources. I also like to use the key words -HEX color palette- to find complimenting colors and make the resources extra pretty!
TPT link https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Vocabulary-challenge-French-les-loisirs-4155985

Starters for the new year- Mini readings

I have been working on the length and questions type I want to use in those mini readings. 
Hopefully the students can work on those individually at the end of the unit or in pairs in the middle of the unit. 
In the USA, a lot of multiple choice questionnaires and True or False appear in publisher work, while students can work on their understanding of the text that way too, having them understand questions and formulate an answers goes way past the reading comprehension work. 

How to use Pinterest in your classroom 1:1 computer classes

So many of you know and use Pinterest to find resources and do research of topics and themes you teach, not mentioning how useful it is for fashion, recipes ad how to get scratches of your wooden floors. 
I use Pinterest in the class to get the kids to write.
I created accounts under pseudonym fr my classes, one for French and one for Spanish. I share the log in and password with the students as they have computers.
The first lesson, they log in and create a secret board. This will ensure the student's online safety.
Once they have a board I give them a task: a question to answer for example in French we review introducing yourself with French celebs, they have to write four sentences to present their person based on info they found online.
They pin a picture and in the description they write their little paragraph. 
From this and as the months and tasks go by the length f their writing expands and the pictures and up to date content makes it a really nice platform to work on.

In the Spanish class and the examples shown here, I use it in the fashion unit, food, vacation and daily routine. 

As the students sign an honor code, pinning or deleting from another board or into another board that is not their's  is a big no-no and hasn't happened yet. i know I am very lucky with the sort of student I work with.


I Pinterest!!! Find me there with the link on the left hand side!