Primary Spanish Workbooks

In September last year I started using custom-made workbooks in my Key Stage 2 lessons.  Previously (for sixteen years!) each child had an A4 exercise book.  I would arrive at school early to be able to get onto the photocopier to produce lots of separate sheets, which I would then have to trim, give out to the children, and hope that they would stick it into their books.  

Their exercise books turned into glorified scrapbooks, which often looked scruffy, as the sheets were often either not stuck in, or stuck in crooked.  We also ended up doing little writing actually on the exercise book page itself.  There was also the issue of children losing sheets or not having sheets because they had been absent.

I suggested to both my headteachers that I should trial using photocopied workbooks instead, and fortunately they agreed.  Each child would have all the resources they needed all in one place, the workbooks would look neater than the exercise books, and the expense of producing the workbooks would be less than buying class sets of exercise books and funding my photocopying habit.

So far the workbooks have been a great success.  The children have the security of knowing everything that they need for the unit is in one place, knowing how far along in the unit we are and what is coming next.  It certainly makes my life easier too, and saves copying, trimming and sticking time.  The only issue we have with neatness is sometimes we have to re-staple some of the booklets.  I'll definitely be continuing to use them - I don't know why I didn't think of it before!

I teach a Spanish mixed-age curriculum in Key Stage 2 in both my schools, so the workbooks I have made so far are for that, and can be found on the webpage at the top of each unit.  I have also made editable copies of the workbooks available in my Sellfy store.  You can see an example of one of them at the top of this post.

Many thanks to the members of the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group for their hints, tips and thoughts about using workbooks.