Category: Educational

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Whether you are teaching children or adults, vocabulary needs to be taught according to a communicative hierarchy and in a context. In other words, you need to teach chunks of language that lend themselves to helping students be successful at speaking Spanish in the real world. 

Outdated textbooks provide long lists of isolated vocabulary and grammatical structures, NOT functional language. In addition, teachers (sadly) aren’t trained in building proficiency skills that will serve their students in actually using the target language to communicate. 

Haven’t you heard many language students complain about how they studied a language for years and can’t say a word? This is the result that we want to avoid in teaching a world language! 

So, how do you determine what structures and easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids for practical use? 

Think about chunks of language that students need to function like:  Where is it? (¿Dónde está?), I like that (Me gusta); I am thirsty/hungry/tired/hot/cold (Tengo sed/hambre/sueño/calor/frío); I want… (Quiero); I have…(Tengo). 

The truth of the matter is that teachers need to be trained in the basics of how to assess language proficiency according to ACTFL oral proficiency standards. Once a teacher understands the criteria for the levels of development from Novice to Advanced, the process of teaching becomes much more effective. 

If a teacher has a group of beginning Spanish students (Novice Low), he/she needs to be able to assess what students CAN DO at this level and know what they should be able to do in order to move to the next level of proficiency (Novice Mid). 

Once the teacher is adept at identifying the skills required for each level (can do’s), the teacher can begin to teach more intentionally with concrete goals for the students to move them forward on the proficiency continuum. 

Training is the key! 

Easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids include putting the easy Spanish words in meaningful contexts that help students to become more communicative. It is a bit of an art to teach this way and totally wreaks havoc with traditional methods. 

The strength of this kind of teaching, however, is that students start developing confidence and skills right away. They no longer memorize long lists of vocabulary, prove their skills with grammar quizzes, and promptly forget everything. No! They practice speaking every day using functional chunks of language. Finally, proficiency is not based on talent, but on practice and hard work, the result of which is a practical skill. 

Language learning is for everyone, not just the gifted and talented.  

As a retired Spanish teacher trained in ACTFL oral proficiency standards, I began working for a company (fl4k.com) that was already doing a great job of teaching easy Spanish vocabulary words to kids within a context through videos, games, and practice questions, with hands-on activities. 

What was missing was the interculturality piece, so a team of teachers who are trained in teaching language according to proficiency standards gathered to inform the company about how to do this best. We have created a culture program that provides fascinating content about nine different Spanish-speaking cultures all presented to kids in a single interactive digital platform that includes dialogues with recording features, practice questions, real-time polling, and features carefully scaffolded language structures and vocabulary in a context. 

Even though the program includes a lot of bells and whistles that appeal to kids of all ages, the best feature of the program is the emphasis on helping students build language proficiency that lasts and actually functions. The easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids are all embedded in cultural posts in a social media-like format that is very appealing to the Gen Z student! 

The easy Spanish vocabulary is given context and therefore becomes memorable. Students need to learn to ask questions (Who?/¿Quién?; What?/¿Qué?; Where?/¿Dónde?; When?/¿Cuándo?; Why? /¿Por qué?; How?/¿Cómo?; How much?/¿Cuánto?) and connect sentences (and/y; also/también; however/sin embargo; therefore/por lo tanto; because/porque, etc. 

Sailing through textbooks with complicated grammar formulas and having students memorize long lists of words just are not an effective way to TEACH students to actually speak another language with lasting results. 

Check out what we are doing at FL4K to help you help your students truly learn to speak another language.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Summer is almost here! Downtime is on the way! Refresh, relax, and find ways to enrich your interculturality curriculum! Is this often an afterthought that finally you need to do something about this summer?

Don’t reinvent the wheel

I am part of a teacher team that is creating an interculturality curriculum that can supplement any Spanish language program K-12. Imagine what fun it is after 43 years in the classroom to help write about Hispanic culture in the most appealing way possible for Gen Z students.

That’s right! This is an interactive digital platform with real-time polls, discussion questions, built-in language lab recording features, and social media-like posts that feature super fascinating intercultural information about nature, art, music, local artists and citizens, sites of interest, history, global challenges, adventures, etc., all with Novice-Intermediate language carefully scaffolded using high-frequency language that is repeated and repeated until it is like second nature for kids to use the target language naturally.

How long does the program take to work through?

Each level of study includes 40-50 intercultural social media-like posts that are short paragraphs about high-interest topics for kids of all ages. There are corresponding interactive practice questions and dialogues,  games specifically designed to build language proficiency, hands-on activities, discussion questions, music, recipes, and pertinent videos with each level of study.

Of the eight levels (Hispanic countries) in the program, a teacher could get through 3 to 4 maximum in a year, depending on the number of contact hours/per week in their school’s language program.

A Flex program for lower elementary students, for example, would only be able to tackle 2 to 3 of the cultural units in a year while a Spanish I and II class at the middle or high school level might be able to complete four units of study, two per semester.

The all-in-one tool for your teacher toolkit

The coolest part about our program is that it includes a curriculum guide, is customizable, is ACTFL aligned, and it is not a textbook! It is all in a single digital platform.

At the very least, check it all out at our website: fl4k.com, and see how we are trying to create the program that we have always wanted ourselves with the intention of saving you time – while at the same time ensuring that your curriculum is interculturally rich and engaging for students today!

Don’t reinvent the wheel this summer! Study our website and see what might work best for you! Reach out to us and schedule a demo or sign up for our free summer trial! Check out the perks for signing up now!

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the last three weeks I have explored the first three stages of group participation and development: forming, storming, and norming, all essential developmental phases in preparation for the final phase, performing!

Most of us have been doing this throughout our teaching careers in the form of group projects or presentations at the end of a unit to give students the opportunity to show what they CAN DO!!

However, if teachers are not careful, this phase can be wrought with complications. Students need to be shepherded through the stages of getting to know each other (forming), wrestling with different personalities (storming), and learning to accept their differences (norming) in order to maximize their ability to be successful as a team. Once a group of students has figured out how to work together, a teacher can assign group projects and presentations.

Group Participation

The age-old problem will still be ensuring that each member of the group participates equally in completing the work. Inevitably, there are some group members that care more about their grade than others and end up doing all the work while resenting less productive group members. I hope that it will not be discouraging for me to admit that I never mastered this issue after 43 years of teaching! Rather, I hope you will be challenged to find new ways to tackle this inequity.

One idea is to make sure that peer evaluation is an important part of the group grade. Help students hold each other accountable by requiring them to evaluate each other anonymously. Build in time elements that require each group member to speak for a certain number of minutes. Consider as many parameters as possible that ensure participation from all!

Presentation Engagement

Even after you have your groups engaged and performing, there is the additional problem of keeping the rest of the class engaged. I have found that group presentations can kill overall Gen Z student engagement in a heartbeat.

Since an important part of building proficiency in a language is learning to ask questions, I suggest requiring every student not presenting to ask follow-up questions. Keep track of how many they ask and factor this data into their participation grade.

You might have students in their seats fill out information about the presentations to keep them focused and engaged. Questions could be general: Mention 2-3 things that you learned; What was good about the presentation?; How could the presentation be better?, etc.

Group Projects

Here are just a few of my favorite group projects ideas:

1. Have a small group of students plan their version of “El Camino de Santiago,” a well-known pilgrimage that ends in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
   1. Students have to research which route they will take, how long they will walk, describe two people they met on the trail, the food they ate, and 2-3 experiences they had, and present their walk to the class. This can be such a fun project for creative students!
   2. What is sad about Gen Z students is they don’t tap into their creativity. They just want to get this project done and get into reading their next social media posts. Be sure to frame this project as an amazing opportunity to learn about “El Camino” and plan a trip that may very well be a reality for them one day when studying abroad during their college days! ( I take every opportunity to entice them to do this!!!)
2. Create a campaign for a cause and compete for financial support like the TV show “Shark Tank.”
   1. In small groups, students decide on a cause (actual or original) and present the rationale for supporting their cause. Each student has fake money to put toward the cause that interests them most.
   2. This results in a competition for which group is able to promote their cause most successfully.
   3. The project can be adapted to a product that relates to a particular unit. For example, students could be charged with creating a fitness program as a culminating activity for a health unit.
3. Hispanic murals and muralists from different cities around the world.
   1. Each group could present their research with a slideshow that features this amazing form of street art and an explanation of the symbolism.
   2. As a final step, the group has to create their own mural and explain its significance.
   3. This can be a digital creation or a sketch, depending on the artistic talent of the group!
4. Creating stories around famous Hispanic artwork.
   1. I especially liked to do this with Frida Kahlo as a way of introducing a whole study of her life and works.
   2. Small groups choose one of her paintings and without knowing anything about her, they create a story around the images. After learning more, the same students present the real story behind the same work of art. It’s a fun way to stimulate creativity and engage students in art appreciation.
5. Famous Families.
   1. In small groups, students research a famous person’s family to introduce to the class.
   2. There can be a certain amount of intrigue with this since many times we don’t know much about the family of a famous actor, singer, artist, or sports figure.
   3. I like to make sure that students find out about pets, too, if possible.
   4. There are many variations on this project, too. In small groups, students can create their own families and present them to the class.

There are endless project and presentation possibilities that can be designed to promote both interculturality and language proficiency in a way that is fun and engaging for today’s digital natives. Start imagining a few of your own as a culminating activity for a unit that incorporates vocabulary, structures, and cultural knowledge!

And one more bit of advice… be sure to structure the project with specific criteria and expectations. Review exactly how the project will be graded. I like to use rubrics that outline what is entailed in order to get the A, B, C, etc. This is the secret to getting stellar products!

FL4K

If you are interested in an amazing way to supplement your curriculum with rich interculturality, check out FL4K. The toolkit that includes culture posts in an Instagram-like format and proficiency-based games and dialogues serve as a great preparation for discussion, research, and projects or presentations! 

We’ll be back next week with another tool tip. In the meantime, sign up for a free trial with FL4K!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last week I mentioned some activities that can be used in the World Language classroom during the “forming” phase of group development. This week, I will address the next phase, “storming,” the time when students may begin to share differing opinions and even compete with each other in the classroom.

Teachers can provide time and space for students to wrestle with ideas and even disagree, ultimately building trust, in preparation for the norming and performing phases of group development. 

The storming phase can be both controversial and fun at the same time if the teacher helps to monitor the group development in a healthy way.

Students can get to know more than the basic facts about each other. They can begin to play competitive games and participate in polls, and even discussions, that may force them to contend with differences of opinion. When conflicts arise, teachers must guide students to listen to each other and maintain respectful behavior toward one another at all times.  

Consider digital games for this phase of group development. 

Quizlet Live

Many of you already play Quizlet Live in the classroom. You can mix up the teams every few rounds and have individual students keep track of how many times they have won. The student with the most wins at the end of class might get their name posted on a leaderboard (poster and marker) for the Quizlet Live Champions.

In my classroom, this was very low stakes and fun for students. Usually, we had different winners every week and then, the rivalry would start to see how many times each one could be featured on the board.

This works well for the “storming” phase because the students get competitive and begin shouting with excitement all in very low-key fun!

Kahoot

Kahoot is another good competitive game in the classroom that can be used for review. It always amazes me how students come alive when they can compete with each other. You can put them in teams to eliminate embarrassment or intimidation. A lively round of Kahoot can create just the positive energy you are looking for in your 21st-century classroom! 

Speed Dating

Speed Dating works well for this phase of group development, too. Students can line up in two parallel lines with one line rotating as they exchange information about a cultural topic that they are studying.

The questions can be controversial in nature and pertain to a very specific set of vocabulary and expressions. The students can prepare ahead of time what they do to help protect the planet and why they think it is important. Then in lines or concentric circles, one group can move, each time sharing their information with a different student in the class. 

Projecting a picture and having the students guess what is going on in it can lead to some differences of opinion. When they finish arguing about their ideas, the teacher can tell them what was actually happening in the picture. This allows students to disagree in a fun and friendly way. 

FL4K

At FL4K we have several activities built into the program that promote the opportunity to both compete and express their own opinions. We have digitized the old-fashioned game of Fly Swatter into a modern game that builds oral proficiency in an engaging and intentional way.  Students get a digital flyswatter and can compete against each other to swat as many correct flies/answers as possible while simultaneously building language proficiency skills. 

Another FL4K feature with the culture program is a built-in polling option in real-time. Students can register their opinion about something pertaining to the culture they are learning and then find out how many in the class agree with them and how many do not.

The teacher can then lead a discussion about the polling topic. For example, after learning about the many waterfalls in Costa Rica, students can answer a poll that gives them the option to say whether they would like to swim under a waterfall or not. Students can then share why they might be interested or fearful.

We have 30-40 culture posts per unit with polling questions for many. It keeps students interested and engaged in practicing the language in a natural way.

Early in our language program, students learn “tener” expressions and can quite capably talk about what they are and are not afraid of. This can stimulate good conversation and again, get kids to handle controversial topics in a healthy way.  

What ways can you think of to create energy and excitement in your classroom that help students learn to compete, communicate, and accept differences of opinion with a priority of respecting each other? Have fun with the “storming” phase of group development!

Next week we will enjoy exploring the next phase of “norming.” In the meantime, sign up for a free trial with FL4K!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Be, Belong, Become. Make this a motto for building an all-inclusive community in your classroom!

The World Language classroom is a place where students should BE accepted for who they are, BELONG to a supportive community, and BECOME the best language learner possible!

Unfortunately, the World Language classroom is often a place where intimidation can be very high! Some students naturally have better pronunciation, some have an easier time understanding and applying complicated grammar matrices, and some are extroverted with no fear of making mistakes or speaking in front of others.

The World Language classroom can be scary for the introverted or intimidated! You need to consider giving every student the best chance possible to succeed, and that takes learning a little about building community and practicing it every day in the classroom. 

The following suggestions are not scientifically proven; they are simply things I learned on the job!

Give students the opportunity to get to know each other every day in your classroom!

Use small group and partner activities to reduce the intimidation factor. Mix them up randomly, too. Don’t allow them to always be with their friends. This leaves the shy students out and makes for a really miserable language learning experience for them. 

Encourage support for every student by not calling out their mistakes in front of everyone.

I was once one of those who had to publicly correct every verb form or improper use of ser vs. estar. What a ridiculous, uninviting way to teach!

Let those mistakes go as long as there is communication happening. Once students have heard the correct language chunks enough, they will just begin to use them correctly.

In my opinion, we are so wrong to call out every grammar mistake every day for every child. It is discouraging and makes them terrified to ever speak the language! How antithetical is this to what we want to do in our classrooms?

Give students positive feedback!

Make it up! If they draw beautifully, comment on that! Find something good about every child and praise it!

Let your students know that you appreciate them in all their wonder, even if their wonder does not include being talented in learning a second language in your classroom. Connect with your students and let them know that you don’t judge their whole being on whether they are successful in your classroom!

This will go a long way toward opening their spirit to the possibility of having a positive language learning experience. 

Measure students against themselves!

If a student can only get two words out the first time they speak in the class, praise that, and encourage them to get three or four out the next time! Let them know that they are making progress and that you have noticed it!

I have taught kids who stutter, have dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, suffer from severe anxiety and depression, are painfully shy, struggle with family issues, just don’t get it, etc.

It was always incumbent on ME to make a comfortable learning situation for them! And guess what? It was always so rewarding to watch those challenged kids shine! And they can and will if you build the right community for them!

Make your classroom about the learning COMMUNITY and not about you and your frustrations with them!

Tune into your kids and hone your community-building skills.

Study Bruce Tuckman’s group development skills of forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Starting with these methods will help build an all-inclusive community in your classroom. In the next few weeks, I will share specific activities for the World Language classroom for each of these stages of group development based on a workshop that my friend and colleague, Elena Giudice, has brilliantly created.

Elena and I are now part of a teacher team that is helping to write curriculum for an amazing language program for kids! Check out FL4K.com to see the latest design for an innovative and interactive way of engaging kids in learning Spanish (for now and many more languages to come)! 

Sign up here for our free trial and see what you think! And if you’ve missed any of my past tips, you can read them here!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This Week’s Teacher Tooltip: Student success comes from making the target language come alive for your students by giving them opportunities to practice using the language outside the classroom. I’ll share some great ways to do this in this post.

Advocating for summer language camps, homestay experiences abroad, or even hosting exchange students can help language come alive for the learner. When students have friends who speak another language, they become more motivated to communicate and build their language proficiency skills almost unwittingly.

Check out Language Testing International and FlipGrid for ways to get your students talking in the target language with native speakers.

Student success comes from making the language come alive through entertaining, comprehensible input!

Other paths that lead to student success in language learning are through media entertainment.

Our students need ample comprehensible input. I remember asking exchange students from Spain how they learned to speak English so well. They told me they loved watching American movies and listening to American music.

TV series, podcasts, music, and movies in the target language are not only entertaining; they lead to student success. When students hear structures used in meaningful contexts, they tend to remember them and begin to use them with confidence. 

Student success comes from teaching your students the language to actually communicate!

Another key point in leading language learning to student success is teaching language in meaningful chunks for communication.

This helps students to hit the ground running as they build proficiency skills. Instead of bogging them down with unwieldy verb conjugations in a vacuum, teach them the super 7 verbs (poder, tener, querer, estar, ser, hay, gustar) that help them be conversant from the start.

When students learn basic phrases for practical needs early in their language studies, they feel empowered and more successful.

Student success comes from lots of repetition that leads to confidence in using the language for practical purposes!

One more key to student success in language learning is repetition! While this is a basic concept, it is not always easy to prioritize in instruction.

Many textbooks and curriculums try to force-feed language to the student. It is overwhelming for them and they often end up feeling defeated. A few gifted and talented students can do it, but the majority can’t. Language learning is for everyone, not just a few talented students.

Student success comes from providing dynamic contexts for the language to keep it fascinating for them!

The last key to student success in language learning is contextualizing the language for the students.

Embed chunks of language in a compelling culture program that helps students develop a global perspective about the world and not only speak the language, but appreciate the richness of being an inclusive language learner, embracing the cultural tapestry woven with language.

Student success is very possible if you find the right curriculum for your students!

Check out FL4K, a state-of-the-art language program for young language learners, that actually prioritizes the criteria that I have mentioned as necessary for student success!

We are a teacher team with many years of experience in the classroom that is helping this company to include these keys to student success in language learning in a single learning platform that captivates young language learners’ attention.

Our curriculum includes entertaining videos, interactive digital games and dialogs especially designed for language learners, built-in language lab practice, and an eight-country culture program that embeds chunks and prioritizes repetition, providing a scaffolded curriculum that truly builds language proficiency skills.

FL4K is designed to build student success. For a program that your students will love: FL4K.com.

We are currently accepting accounts for our upcoming free trial to pilot this program! If you’d like to participate in trying out the program for free, sign up here.

P.S. Missed any of my past tool tips? Catch up here.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Student success can be elusive at times if we don’t understand how to build confidence in the language classroom. Let’s first put ourselves in the shoes of our students and consider for a moment what it is like for them to achieve student success.

Learning to speak another language can be scary and intimidating! There is the challenge of having the right vocabulary words to express oneself as well as the right structures, not to mention the correct pronunciation. This can be overwhelming for any student to consider all at once. 

Measuring student success using the ACTFL Language Standards 

Using rubrics that clearly outline the expectations for student success can alleviate anxiety for language students and give them specific goals to work toward.

In the Wayside EntreCulturas textbook series for French and Spanish, the rubrics for the ACTFL Standards can be found in the indices at the back of the book and adapted for individual use. Teachers really need a MOPI training workshop in order to interpret them best.

Today’s language teacher needs a clear understanding of what it means to be a novice, intermediate, or advanced language student according to these standards in order to create a standards-based classroom where students know what is entailed in reaching success. It is amazing to watch students strive to reach standards when they know specifically how student success is measured. Comparing students to a rubric and not to each other is a formula for student success.  

Creating a cooperative vs. competitive community

From day one in the world language classroom, teachers need to work toward building a supportive community where students feel comfortable taking risks. This comes about through creating many group activities where students have the chance to get to know each other and practice language learning together.

Encouraging students to help each other achieve student success instead of competing with each other to succeed comes in studying group development strategies and instituting them in the classroom on a regular basis.

Teachers can attend annual professional development conferences like ACTFL, NECTL, SWOLT, and SCOLT to learn more about how to promote cooperation in the classroom. My colleague, Elena Giudice, and I will be presenting a whole session called “#ALLin!: Developing an inclusive and motivated community of learners” on April 1st at the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) in Norfolk, Virginia.

There are truly so many creative ways to create a community of mutually supportive learners, all striving for student success and all achieving it at their own pace!

Can-Do Statements help guide student success

Every world language teacher should familiarize themselves with the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements. It is important to use benchmarks to help guide student success.

Teachers can use these national guidelines but can also make up their own Can-Do Statements for every unit. Think of exactly what it is that you want your students to be able to do at the end of a unit and then guide them accordingly. It is amazing for students to realize what they “Can Do” versus the out-moded critical teaching style.

Remember when your language teacher was very quick to correct every grammatical error in front of the whole class? This leads to shame, embarrassment, and the ultimate resignation of “I am really bad at language learning.” Be a teacher who concentrates on what each student CAN DO and learn more about it on the ACTFL website.   

These are just a few basic ways to begin to learn more about teaching for student success! 

Looking to improve your students’ or children’s language skills? Learn how you can get early access to our groundbreaking language program that teaches kids Spanish the fun way! Sign up here.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

In order for students to progress from a novice level of proficiency according to the ACTFL language proficiency standards to an intermediate level, they need to build competence in asking questions.

Once I went through the Modified Oral Proficiency Interview training and certification process, I became more intentional about helping my students learn to ask questions. I’d like to share just a few of the ways that I discovered to motivate my students to practice their Spanish question words.

While I am recently retired from classroom teaching, I still implement the same principles in my private classes. The only way for our students to learn to use the Spanish question words is to provide a lot of opportunities for them to use them. Asking questions in Spanish is not a unit in a book with Spanish question words to be memorized and forgotten. It is a skill that must be practiced daily and is not hard to include in your daily class activities for students.

Post Spanish question words in the classroom

From day one in the language classroom, the Spanish question words should be posted and referred to often! You can buy fancy posters online or make your own. With every creative activity that you do, consider ways to encourage students to use the Spanish question words.

Seek opportunities for your students to be the ones asking the questions daily

Teaching students to ask questions is all part of creating a more student-centered classroom. Take yourself off the center stage as the one asking your students all the questions.

With every student presentation, require the students to ask questions. I keep track of how many questions each student asks to count toward their effort grade. I don’t make a big deal about the percentage of the grade it is worth, but rather I make sure that they understand how crucial the skill is in building language proficiency.

Remember how we teachers used to always ask the questions while the rest of the students just sat in boredom? I learned to require my students to ask questions with every activity that we did in the classroom.

Mystery and Spanish question words in the classroom

Students love mystery! I like to assign students to share a picture with the class on a regular basis as a warm-up or closing activity.

The student presents/projects a picture of him/herself from summer vacation, a favorite weekend activity, a place they go with friends to hang out, etc, and the rest of the class has 5-10 minutes to find out as much as possible about ¿dónde? (where?); ¿qué? (what?); ¿quién? (who?); ¿cuándo? (when?); ¿por qué? (why?).

I give points to the ones questioning, making sure that everyone asks at least one question.

The student who is presenting can be evaluated, too, based on how spontaneously they can answer classmates’ questions. This can be very motivating if students get into the spirit of it and you make it count as part of their effort grade.

Guessing games and Spanish questions in the classroom

There is no end to guessing games you can create in the classroom.

I know a teacher who always has her students “show and share” once a week as an assigned warmup. It is easy to turn this activity into a guessing game. The student sharing would be the one to spontaneously field all the questions while students try to gather as much information as possible about the object, picture, word. A student could simply write a place or word on the board and students have to try to discover the significance of it.

For larger classes, you could have your students do this in small groups. You could also have students share the title of a good book or movie and have students find out the plot and why the student likes it.

The object is to learn something personal about each class member while at the same time building proficiency in asking and answering questions. In other words, building language proficiency for real-world use.

Twenty questions

Students learn how easy it is to ask questions in Spanish without the Spanish question words by merely making a statement and changing the intonation with a game of Twenty Questions.

If the place a student wants others to guess is “la playa” (the beach), the students might figure it out using the following questions: ¿es un lugar? (it is a place?), ¿hace calor? (Is it hot?), ¿te gusta ir los fines de semana? (Do you like to go on weekends?), ¿puedes nadar allí? (can you swim there?), ¿hay árboles allí? (are there trees there?), ¿está cerca de tu casa? (is near your house?), ¿vas allí con frecuencia? (do you go there often?), etc.

You could put the Súper 7 verbs + ir (tener, querer, hay, gustar, poder, ser, estar, ir) on the board and insist that students formulate questions using them. Cross them off as students use them ensuring that there are a variety of questions asked.

Cultural Information gap

Have students each read a short culture segment pertaining to a country of study.

The object of this activity is for each student to read their segment to themselves and then pair it with a student who read a different segment. Each one has five minutes to ask the other as many questions as they can about what the other one read or to simply share what they learned in their culture segment with a requirement for follow-up questions from a partner.

The partner will then do the same. After they have shared as partners, they can team up with two others and share in the same way.

Finding short cultural segments can be time-consuming! I am part of a teacher team creating short interactive social media-like culture posts tailored for the Gen Z attention span, covering food, nature, lodging, citizens, geography, sites of interest, etc., about 9 Hispanic cultures.

The innovative features of the program include fully customizable real-time commenting and polling as well as cultural comparison questions for discussion, hands-on activities, music, and embedded cultural videos.

Check it out at FL4K.com and request a demo. These culture posts are chock full of dynamic information about Hispanic culture around the world and serve as a springboard for teaching the art of asking questions. 

Current events

Have students present news on a regular basis. Each student briefly presents a headline with only a few facts while students in the class try to find out more about the news event by asking questions.

Students need lots of practice asking questions on a daily basis. Commit to having students master Spanish question words and to making questioning activities a part of every class.

It takes just a little creativity to figure out how to make the use of Spanish question words and the art of asking questions essential in your classroom. Ask your students what ideas they have.

Students could create a question-and-answer game where they invent answers and students have to come up with a question like Jeopardy. This is just one example! You and your students will be able to think of one hundred more ways to practice asking questions once you commit to making this a priority in your classroom!

Remember: You will be helping your students to build language proficiency for real-world use if you STOP asking the questions and get your students to START asking them! Try it tomorrow!

Missed my past Tool Tips? You can read about the Can-Do classroom, the importance of building relationships with your students, the Student-Centered Classroom, and much more on FL4K.com right now!

Looking to improve your students’ language skills? Learn how you can get early access to our groundbreaking language program that teaches kids Spanish the fun way! Sign up for early access here.