I use this to get students in to the topic of food which can be a bit boring. I get them to prep their own answers, and then speed date to ask and answer with as many partners as possible. I am trying to get them to be more authentic in their responses to get those top marks in Speaking.

This was created after a student in my Y11 class asked at what age you can drink in Spain. I am always looking for ways in to topics that give them a flavour of A Level and we were just about to start the health topic when it occured to me to link the idea of health issues and youth problems to legal age of consent and the fact that young people are in too much of a hurry to grow up.

I created a whole SOW around the idea that Y9 were making a low budget latin american version of LOST-see KS$ GCSE textbook for Edexcel for original idea. So when we do sports we do water sports and introduce them via likes and dislikes before introducing more conventional sports

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.

I have just put together display for sprucing up classroom at start of term- have had them laminated A3- For years I have been putting up classroom language signs and then failing to sustain insistence that they use the phrases so I have distilled it down to absolute minimum on one poster and have decided to challenge them to keep it going all year. Meetings and greetings- not all that clever really but again just to see if I can get them to say hi in Spanish spontaneously if the constant reminder is on display

Quite a challenging reading task for Y9, but do insist they don't mindlessly tick boxes but have to make a note of new language. I get them to use the language in order to then write a lengthy paragraph about cinema going habits and preferences. I have got them to ask and answer the questions in pairs as well.

Knicked the idea from GCSE text book and then created a whole series of resources around a group of Spanish speaking characters marooned on an island. You can then do daily routine of the survivors, water sports rather than conventional sports/Who caused the plane to crash and why/ who is having an affair with who and so on-relationships. It lends itself to anything you like in the end. Suddenly boring topics become more fun and students have really run with the idea. will add more of my stuff on this soon

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

Can be used with able students in Y9, particularly the questionnaire vas al cine a menudo

Speaks for itself really. He seems to be hugely popular at the moment. This is a challenging reading but because they know something about him already it appeals to boys in particular. Alternative easier version also included that I use with weaker GCSE students and KS3

How to make comparisons fun for a disaffected Y8 or Y9- well at least I think it's fun. The Wordsearch is meant to encourage choice of interesting adjectives and give you a bit of space. The next thing on that sheet could be used as a card sort if you have the time/energy. I always think getting them to put the sentence together works but I have taken to giving a sentence per pair and then a quick put it back in envelope and pass on. The jumbled version of the same grid is called a sentence machine. They work in teams with a piece of paper. Each time they correctly combine a set of words to make a sentence they send a runner to check and then cross it off in the machine. The more sentences they generate the more points and points mean rewards. The PPT introduces the structure and there are plenty of extra pics if you want to print some off and get them to generate their own example sentences in pairs.

I think I've shared this before but this is a slimmer version for Y8 or Y9 beginners as opposed to GCSE. Aim to make doing routine and working with present tense a bit more fun by describing the day of a Vicky Pollard type character.

Aim is to do invitations and modal verbs but make it more fun by having a scenario where A is keen on B but B does not want to go out on a date and ends up having to be blunt. There are typical excuses with je dois + infinitive but then a dictionary/translation skills exercise that adds in such things as It is a full moon and I am going to turn in to a werewolf. When they write their own dialogues they end up having more fun than the classic text book dialogue that has them saying they cant because they've got to go to visit their gran.

More than one lessons worth for teaching how to describe home/bedroom. Students can then use to write about own house and create Ads to sell their dream home. I also get them to write a description of their dream bedroom because more creative-changing rooms idea. Properties in the sun is a challenge to get them using more interesting vocab. Silly points is someone else's game so thank you to whoever put that on TES- but I have made it in to describing home- Play with it so you can see why it is called silly points. Students absolutely love it and they work really hard on the tasks- You can adapt any way you like and at any level- so you can do things like -10 seconds to give me 10 words for....

I have done this as a running reading. Students have the reading sheet in teams. They all get the first question, find the answer and Number one comes up with answer written down to collect the next question. Wrong answer and they have to go back and re-confer. Everyone in team has to take it in turns to come up. If you have not tried this as a way of getting them to work on a text do have a go.

This is not quite finished so if I develop it further I will add. My Y9s are really getting in to it and they absolutely love the crime scene investigation. I haven’t added a crime scene document because you will have to create that yourself depending on how much time and effort you want to put in but I have explained what I do in the ppt notes. It says things like -they found fingerprints on a bottle of wine left on the table-there was a …under the bed-and in fact it isn’t under the bed it is somewhere else in the room- for things like the bed- I place photos in the room-I then have a glass with lipstick on it-I have a fingerprint kit-costs £4-I have crime scene tape, and chalk-again cheap- toy murder weapon-or in this case some fake pearls from charity shop. So you see you can set it up as you like and use whatever props you like. In previous years I have got them to act out the inspector interviewing them-so where were you at, what were you doing when, what did you do between…and, What is missing is who actually killed Luisa- I always have an idea but the best activity is when the students decide and you write the ending together. In my version Carmen was the intended victim even though she is pregnant and the murderer was Felipe- he found out that she was pregnant with someone else’s child and acted out of jealousy-he also didn’t want his plans to marry Luisa to be ruined by Carmen lying to her husband and telling him that the baby is Felipe’s, something she told Felipe she would do if he didn’t help her get away from Don Navarro. Hope someone out there wants to have a go and like I say it is ripe for adaptation.

Can be used at any level. The slides have commentary so you can see what I do with it. Great for Speaking and or writing-great just before Easter- great for getting students to use the preterite accurately, great for expressing interesting opinions. You’ll be surprised at how much speakng they do, how much attention they pay to verb endings if you turn it in to collaborative writing instead. You’ll be surprised how they remember there are alternatives to delicioso after using this activity. When they’ve finished the collaborative writing I ask them to count number of words and they often find they’ve written more than 150 and so you can then say to them that this is the number of words for Higher writing now at GCSE. Obviously it isn’t GCSE task but they do like realising that 150 words isn’t such a big deal. I do it in conjunction with an activity that I have uploaded before about the History of chocolate because it comes from Mexico and the song el chocolate by Jesse y Joy-on Youtube- really easy to hear the lyrics if you have not come across these two before. I also link it to como agua para chocolate for GCSE classes-look at an extract from the novel with an able motivated class perhaps-watch bits of film-not the saucy bits-I sometimes just show the wedding scene.

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.

Y7 coursebooks always use classroom objects to teach colours. That never strikes me as a great idea. Singular/plural yes and masculine and feminine but not a yellow pencil. So I use it to practise dictionary skills and it really works. The whole idea is to get to the challenge which is the things you shouldn’t have in your school bag, hence the slide with the pet toad, the conkers and the fake note from home about homework. The last slide is the boy a bit older. The students I had today were happily adding their own ideas and they really understood the need to record whether noun was masculine or feminine. I uploaded the French version ages ago and so this is the exact same thing but in Spanish. It is aimed at Y7 but the principle behind it could be useful at all levels. Then we wont have to answer that annoying child who says “It’s not in the dictionary.” Later in the year I will do part of a lesson showing them on-line dictionaries, more and more schools are allowing use of phones for learning in classroom. This to me is 10 times more valuable than duolinguo.

I may have shared this before but it is about verbs linked to daily routine and getting students to use metalanguage. I love this kind of focus on describing language and students respond well if you really feel confident it is worthwhile. I don't like students to think verbs are doing words so I talk about stative and dynamic verbs and it does not scare them. The second ppt about practising routine-not new and you have probably got one of your own already-but do have a look. I have attached some word worksheets I have used in conjunction with PPT and a silly points game-have a look and you will see why it is called silly points-great idea and not originally mine.