Right at the beginning of Spanish 1, we talk about the pets they have and the pets they want. For one, everyone love talking about their furry friends AND it’s a great way to get in a zillion reps of some high frequency heavy hitters like “has”, “wants” “is named” and “likes to play/ eat/ sleep” to start the year off strong. It’s a low stress way to interact, gush over cute puppies and give them loads of comprehensible input. Bonus: there’s always the kid who puts in a picture of a gorilla or a T Rex or a centaur or the Fortnite Horse which is fantastic to discuss.

I drop this slideshow into Google Classroom and invite them to add in pictures of the pets they have OR the pets they want. It’s totally optional; the kids who want to show off their pets add in pictures and we talk about one or two a class until we’ve discussed them all.

• Spanish Pet Picture Talk Slideshow
• Japanese Pet Picture Talk Slideshow, どうもありがとうございます Kathryn Tominaga
• German Pet Picture Talk Slideshow Danke, Suzanne Greenwalt 
• Mandarin Pet Picture Talk Slideshow, 谢谢 Wu Ping
• French Pet Picture Talk Slideshow Merci Heidi Trude, Susan Bondy, Maureen Klingaman et Candy Holland
• Latin Pet Picture Talk Slideshow gratias ago tibi, Keith Toda
• Anyone who wants to translate it into something else, grab a copy and share it back with me, pretty please! (senorachase at gmail dot com!)

For the first Pet Picture Talk, I tell them about my fur babies, Maverick and Archie. A Picture Talk is basically just using an image as something to talk about, and to assist me (and keep be from going out of bounds with too much new vocab), I’ve included some language that likely will come up. While I’m Picture Talking, like everything we do, I’m focused on making myself comprehensible, going really slow, teaching to their eyes and checking for comprehension using Magic Cards. This is what it looks like halfway through our 2nd week of school, with my brand new Spanish 1 Little Darlings:

Then, for subsequent Picture Talks on subsequent days, we talk about someone else’s pet(s). I ask questions to the pet owner (What’s his name? How old is he?) and I ask questions of the class (Look at him. Do you think he likes to eat or he likes to play? Do you think he is a good cat or a naughty cat?) then the owner verifies. To ensure that everyone’s brains are turned on and tuned in, I’ll either use the Magic Cards throughout (Jamie, what’s one thing we’ve learned about Donny’s cat?) or we’ll wrap up the picture talk with a few True/False questions on a Lightning Fast Quick Quiz.

To dovetail with the Picture Talks, after everyone’s schedule changes settle down, we use Pet Partner Sheets often every class, to get them moving around, working with new friends and to enforce and introduce some new pet vocab. Partner Sheets are a favorite tool in my tool kit and you can read more about them here!

Hope your year is off to a great start!

🐶🐱🐁🐠🦜️🦔

AnneMarie