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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Cartoons in Spanish Class? New Incentive

In my classroom I have students organized into five different teams (azul, morado, verde, amarillo, and rojo.) Students sit on color spots and as I go through my lessons I mark down points for students as they earn them (for sitting down properly, giving correct responses, etc.) Students are usually really competitive about it and it helps significantly with any behavior problems. I do this for students in grades K-2. Once students have reached 100 points (each team) we celebrate.

This celebration I decided to teach them the phrase "Qué Hiciste." I taught them to use the phrase in the context of a mistake "what did you do!" I then told them that as part of the celebration, we were going to watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Before watching it, I explained how "malo" Tom and Jerry were to each other. Hence, every time they do something in the cartoon that is mean, we have to scream at the screen "Qué Hiciste." The videos are short (around 6-7 minutes) and give the kids a great reward because they love watching cartoons, but forces them to interact with Spanish in the process. Another great benefit of Tom and Jerry is that there is no language used in the cartoons, so it has perfect application in any language classroom.

Here are a couple of videos I have already screened and really enjoyed using: