- The small blue label dot is to assign random (or pre-selected) pairs. Card "dos" has an identical blue dot with the letter "A" (see below for more examples). I often fall into allowing students to work with a preferred partner for comfort's sake, so I thought this would make it easy to quickly assign them and not overthink the pairings, unless necessary.
- The red dot is to assign groups of 3. I started at 1000 and worked back by one hundreds. The large numbers were purposeful to get more practice of them.
- The list at the right is mostly self-explanatory. Students will hold onto their cards during the hour, so they can have this cheat sheet to help them jump into using and understanding some functional Spanish.
- The intention for the list on the bottom left is to provide a jump start to students to create a story with a partner, trio or even alone. I created 15 different scenarios. Each has a subject that I almost always paired an adjective with to reinforce agreement, a place, 2 verbs , and adverb, a unique object, a transition word, and a time or feeling. They all have some additional verb cognates at the bottom that they would easily recognize, but may not yet know or use. I defined words that were either new or those that would possibly not be immediately recognized. My plan for using this section is for students to write a story in class with a partner or trio and then for homework take the draft home and fine tune it and then return to share with their partner the next day. From there, students would add the story to their collection on SeeSaw (an online journal).
- The back of the card has a question set. I tried to come up with some key Spanish 1 topics that students would benefit from reviewing more frequently. I decided on self, family, school, and free time. The question sets are color coded by the 2 inch dot on the front of the card so neither the pairs nor the trios will end up with a repeat question set. My thought with these is for students to form groups of three- 1 student to interview, 1 to respond and a third to listen and then record the conversation. (Students could take turns with those roles using the same question set, or change the set, based on experience with the questions.) Students can then play back the recording to listen for pronunciation, grammatical accuracy, fluency or whatever you would like. I plan to have students save the recordings in SeeSaw (they can record directly there and tag themselves) so they can have a portfolio of their practice and other work.) It will also allow students to save written work, which I also intend for students to save there. If you haven't seen it, it's easy to use and really worth checking out (and it's free!) There are a few more pictures of the cards below if that helps you visualize better.
I figured that the cards could also come in handy for a sub. Students could complete the story writing activity in pairs, and even go on to revise the draft in class. If typed, it could be collaboratively created using a Google Doc and then shared. It could also be copied and pasted to SeeSaw. If handwritten, SeeSaw allows you to take a picture of the work to upload as well. Students could also practice and record a few situations from the backs of cards in trios right in SeeSaw, or students could save it to Drive, call into Google Voice or use another preferred tool you use. The technology adds a bit more accountability to students while a sub is there, as, well as providing them a record of their work for reflection's sake, and you the ability to easily view it all in one place from wherever!