It’s that time of year…the sun is shining, the grass is freshly cut and my little darlings are crawling out of their skin!  Here’s a fun activity  for the end of the year… it is not necessarily “Input Rich”, but it does a good job of keeping them focused and stretching their brain cells, and buying me a few minutes of calm.

I have a tenancy to Spanish-fy my little darlings’ names…Camden Brown is Camden Café and I call Shelby Apple Shelby Manzana. I also do the same with teachers and in this warm up, they have to figure out which teacher is which, based on their Spanishfied last name.

Students either work in pairs or groups of 3 and I project this slide, with many of their teachers’ names Spanish-fied. Grab your staff list and have a little fun. Mrs. Shiply becomes Sra. Barcomente. Mr. Deadmon is now Sr. Hombre Muerto. Mr. Johnson is Señor Hijo de Juan and Mrs. Parks is Sra. Parques. Translate entire names if you can, if you can’t, just translate words within last names: we’ve got Sra. Korseniew-esquía (Korseniewski) and Sr. Laz-oreja (Lazear) and Srta. Blah-cuello (Blahnik) and Sr. Lunder-verde (Lundergreen). It takes a bit of time to Spanish-fy the names but once you have your list, it’s a snap to revise it every year. Now not all of these are comprehensible, I definitely use words they haven’t learned yet but that is part of the fun.

After I give them about 10 minutes to write down their best guesses. Then I start giving them clues, in Spanish. Mira número 18. Un lirio es una flor… Mira número 4. En la playa hay mucha arena. Clase, ¿ves el número 35? Un roble es un árbol muy grande. En California hay muchos robles.  I don’t give clues for all of them, but it’s a way to give them a bit of input and they think they’re getting freebies 🙂 Then we trade and grade and it is really hilarious. Try it! It’s fun!

love,

Sra. Persigue