I've got a big class for GCSE Spanish in September and this is my attempt to get them to revise the basics before the start of the autumn term so we can hit the ground running. If you were thinking of giving Y9 some Summer work in preparation for GCSE you might find this useful to use and or adapt.

Way to get students to talk about how they use technology. I took the 2 questions about dumping on Facebook and would you ban mobiles in school and got them to do a speed date around the room to practise asking and answering then we did a straw poll to see who would really dump a boy or girlfriend on face book and they loved it. This was follow up to doing Higher listening practise Edexcel 2011/2012 one on use of mobiles in class 2012 and one on using social networking sites 2011. Also nicked and adapted from a freebee from Mary Glasgow magazine about dumping on Facebook

Spanish version of a questionnaire I did in French. I use it as a stimulus for a CA on speaking but it is also a Higher level reading task with quite a lot of idiomatic Spanish which they love.

A way to get disaffected Y9 students through the last few weeks of term. Does not have to be done at the end of the year. You may well want to change bits to fit what you have done with your classes. Also the bit about Viva Argentina relates to current world cup and so will be out of date soon and is my wind up of the boys in one of my Y9 classes. Could be all in Spanish to make it more challenging and be used in KS4 or indeed KS5.

Los jovenes pasan demasiado tiempo frente a una pantalla- taken from several articles on net. Idea that it is not just a conventional reading resource but shows and trains them in how to tackle a higher reading. Used in preparation for CA on weekend activities that is why there are some questions for adapting at the end

I created this to help my Y11 prepare for a CA on what they do at weekend. Attempt to help them create more extended answers

With the idea of interesting students in the culture behind the language this is expressing opinions about food whilst learning about food from Spain and Latin America. It gives a great opportunity for students to get their tongues round some great words and they will often enjoy giving opinions about foods they have never tried. It brings out and challenges their prejudices. Key focus on speaking and does challenge students on uses of gustar and other verbs for likes/dislikes + adjectival agreement- it does need differentiating.

Don't we often underestimate how difficult they find it to use a dictionary and isn&'t it always annoying when they say they can&';t find the word and they are in the wrong half of the dictionary. We use Petit Nicolas in Y7 so this is why he appears in this ppt but also we always do teach classroom objects. So to have fun and teach how to look up nouns the task requires them to look up words like conker and marbles because that is just what Nicolas would have in his bag apart from his ruler and so on. I then thought they could look up what teenage Nicolas would have.

Higher reading resource taken from French newspaper and then edited with questions in English

An idea for a beginning of Y12 or Y13 icebreaker. Largely about speaking but can be used to do a grammar diagnostic. Based on Radio 4's desert island discs. Great fun to try and a good way to get to know the group and their confidence levels, is also music is a topic that has come up on Edexcel AS papers every year. Do let me know if you have tried something like this before and or if you try this one.

They say they are making it harder to get those top grades so here is a way to make even teaching something reasonably straight forward like adjectives of personality a little more A*- or indeed 1 as it will be in a few years apparently.

This goes with article about legal age of consent and problems facing young people. I think they will respond to the A level style theme. Much more fun than doing what is your daily diet and do you get enough exercise.

New GCSE and 'literature', we are doing education with Y7 so I have created this reading skills focussed ppt using extracts from les excuses de petit Nicolas Use of white boards and an element of competition stops it from being too teacher led and the great thing about Nicolas is if they like him he can come up again- we are doing les vacances with Y8 so we might add in a petit Nicolas on holiday extract

We do a lot of work on metalanguage in Y7 and this one is all about verbs so includes what is a verb/ what is an infinitive and then focusses on present tense so they understand regular and irregular. Mine build up a mind map as we go along in books and then create games/verb posters- it is taught in conjunction with saying what do at weekend.this ppt takes at least 3 lessons to go through with lots of repetition, white board work, competitions, making notes etc

Y10 GCSE Spanish but could be used with more able in KS3. Describing your house can be dreary so I came up with the idea of a description of the prison that Pablo Escobar designed himself. It really worked as they found the story fascinating, and were able to predict the content with a few nudges. They were then willing to go on and be more creative with their own descriptions.

KS3 or KS4- vocabulary for personality- use anyway you like Divided in to cognates and non cognates

This is a preview of a resource that I will shortly be uploading. It is an extensive review of how the Spanish Civil War and its’ aftermath has been depicted in film. You will know many of them and there will be others you and or your students haven’t seen or heard of. The main film reviews are original and come with tasks that enable students to develop their reading skills and how to talk about film. Many are accompanied by short articles that provide historical context, to make sense of the films and to learn more about the war. It is well researched and well informed. I am going to attempt to sell it as it is a labour of love and has taken me time and effort to produce. It is aimed at A Level students but you could adapt some of the articles for students aiming for an 8-9 at GCSE and or to get them interested in A Level.

This is a systematic and comprehensive look at how the Spanish Civil War has been portrayed on screen. Some of the films will be well known to you already and there are lots of good resources on films like Pans Labyrinth out there. My resources on such films may be appreciated as they focus on very specific aspects of the films and are based on a lot of research. Some of these films you and your students may not have seen and should and hopefully this resource will inspire you to watch some of them. Where background is needed to fully appreciate the film reviews I have provided it, so it will give you and your students a lot of socio-political background and historical detail too. The reviews are original and provide good speaking and reading practice. I have provided answer keys for some of the activities but not all. It is also possible to adapt the activities to suit the needs and confidence levels of the students. I have provided a How to use this resource section too. It is not aimed at one specific exam board although I may be obliged to specify when I upload it. It is aimed at Post-16, though I have used it with GCSE students too. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I did in creating it.

Not fabulously original but I have been trying to drum tenses in to Y10 and thought some of these might be useful to share. The Imperfect ppt is based on my childhood so you might want to change the slides. Also I acknowledge that one of the reading tasks is not my own, so thank you to the person who shared it originally. I am building up to a first CA around relationships/family/free time hence the context for all the grammar tasks. I particularly wanted to get them mixing tenses, hence the mixing it up activities.

Food and poetry designed for our Y7 who are doing food this term but could be adapted. Le petit nicholas- again Y7 when doing school- followed by watching the excellent and funny film of le petit Nicholas that they loved because we'd looked at the story first I have added presentation for a teach meet -showing elements of the above but also ideas for using fairy stories- and source of material This is the year that will be doing literature at GCSE