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

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.

I have a challenging Y9 Spanish group made up of all boys. I took them to the computer room and told them they were investigative reporters who were interested in the supernatural and the unexplained. They were then given this task sheet and I have never seen them so focussed. They all decided it was alien in origin and won't be persuaded otherwise, even when I told them about the severed heads.

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.

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.\nI am building up to a first CA around relationships/family/free time hence the context for all the grammar tasks.\nI particularly wanted to get them mixing tenses, hence the mixing it up activities.

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.\nIf you were thinking of giving Y9 some Summer work in preparation for GCSE you might find this useful to use and or adapt.

Food and poetry designed for our Y7 who are doing food this term but could be adapted.\nLe 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\nI have added presentation for a teach meet -showing elements of the above but also ideas for using fairy stories- and source of material\nThis is the year that will be doing literature at GCSE

SOS salud is short agony aunt letters related to diet with giving advice. \nEl tabaquismo- you might think this is more AS but sometimes able GCSE students are surprised by how much they understand particularly as this is a topic they know about and the language is taken and adapted from a newspaper article on the net so is full of cognates. The questions also clear up some of what they might not understand.

Instead of approaching Daily routine as a lexical task which is what we often do with Year 7, this approach focuses more on verbs and daily routine is simply the context, so in the end what matters is that they can apply the rules not that they know 10+ phrases for describing routine. My Year 7 can now define a regular/irregular and reflexive verb. They know what an infinitive is and what to conjugate means. We then went on to look at the gap fill more closely so that they can add connectives and time phrases to a description of their daily routine as I am sure you all do. The difference now is that when they prepare for their speaking assessment at the end of this term they will hopefully, some at least add activities they do in the evenings that I haven't taught them.

Not particularly original but I have quite a lot of fun reading out the story for the listening activity and being a Spanish 'Vicky Pollard'- also I find the card sort really gets them thinking about metalanguage and how verbs work- I find mind mapping a really good way to get them to figure out the rules instead of giving it to them- pre-populate a mind map with sub headings so they only have to fill in details and that works well. I also like getting them to work with infinitives and verb tables because they don't use them effectively if you don't actively show them how.

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.\nUsed in preparation for CA on weekend activities that is why there are some questions for adapting at the end

This is the right version to look at. I shared the wrong ppt last time so it would not have made sense.\n\nIt was used to prepare students for a Controlled assessment on giving advice and health issues\n\nWorked really well and generated some lively discussion

I shared a lesson plan on giving advice with accompanying documents and then received a comment which made me have another look.\nThis is in fact the full lesson plan ppt that goes with those resources, sorry about the mistake.

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.

Developed from Edexcel rojo activity on Pans Lab\n\nReading, adapting texts and then writing, watching extracts of the film and commenting.\n\nCould be a build up to an assessed piece of writing or speaking\n\nHistoria oficial is a Higher reading activity

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.

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.\nKey focus on speaking and does challenge students on uses of gustar and other verbs for likes/dislikes + adjectival agreement- it does need differentiating.

I teach the whole of Y9 but only once a week so I have to get through a lot very quickly, and they have only started Spanish this year. This is then how I have approached familiarisation with the present tense using the model teenager and the teenager from hell.\nThe vocab inserts get stuck in their books for reference at the start of term.

Los personajes is based on the idea of creating a soap opera like LOST but a spanish version,first developed in conjunction with Edexcel for GCSE Spanish Unit 4, I will add my GCSE version soon