Taken from an article published by Reuters and edited. Higher reading task but with vocabulary for support and questions in English

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.

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

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.

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

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