Spanish fiestas and festivals

A member of the Languages in Primary Schools (LiPS) Facebook group was asking yesterday which special Spanish days are commonly taught as part of the cultural element of the Key Stage 2 curriculum.  Celebrations and festivals are also a part of the new GCSE course in Languages.

Here is a list of all the popular fiestas and días festivos.  If I have missed any that are celebrated widely or across the country, or that are popular fiestas from elsewhere in the Hispanic world, please put it in a comment and I'll add it to the list.

You can download my Días Festivos Tarsia and dominoes from here.

Año Nuevo	1st January	New Year
la Cabalgata de los Reyes	5th January	Parade of the Three Kings
el Día de Reyes	6th January	Day of the Three Kings / Epiphany
el Día de San Valentín	14th February	Valentine’s Day
el Día de la Amistad	14th February	Friendship Day
Carnavales	February	Carnivals (take place Thursday before Shrove Tuesday to Shrove Tuesday)
las Fallas de Valencia	15th-19th March	The Falles
el Día de San José / el Día del  Padre	19th March	St Joseph’s Day / Father’s Day
Semana Santa	March/April	Holy Week
el Día de San Jorge	23rd April	St George's Day
el Día del Libro	23rd April	Book Day
Feria de Abril	April / May	Seville April Fair (takes place in the 3rd week after Semana Santa)
Día Internacional de los Trabajadores	1st May	Labour Day
el Día de la Madre	1st Sunday in May	Mother’s Day
Corpus Cristi	10th June	Corpus Christi
Fiestas de San Juan	last week of June	St John festivals
San Fermín	7th July	St Fermin’s Day
Asunción de la Virgen	15th August	Assumption of Mary
la Tomatina	last Wednesday in August	Tomato-throwing festival
la Fiesta Nacional	12th October	Spain’s national day
el Día de la Hispanidad	12th October	Day of the Spanish-speaking world / Columbus Day
el Día de los Muertos	31st October – 2nd November	Day of the Dead (not Spain)
Todos los Santos	1st November	All Saints' Day
Día de la Constitución	6th December	Constitution Day
Inmaculada Concepción	8th December	Day of the Immaculate Conception
Nochebuena	24th December	Christmas Eve
el Día de Navidad	25th December	Christmas Day
el Día de los Santos Inocentes	28th December	Day of the Holy Innocents (like April Fools’ Day)
Nochevieja	31st December	New Year’s Eve

Kagan Rally Table: a variation on the theme

A couple of summers ago I blogged about Kagan Structures for Spanish, which I have been experimenting with since then.  

I have been using a variation on the idea of the Rally Table, where students work in pairs, each writing in a different colour to complete a task.

I have given double-sided worksheets to pairs of children, often mixed-ability pairs, for them to complete together.  They each choose a different colour to write in (it's the only time I will allow technicolour gel pens!).  They write their names at the top with their colours to show me who has written what.

Here is a copy of one such activity that Year 5 Spanish did on Thursday.  I made it using Pictotraductor:

Most pairs completed the activity - they seem to get more work done when they are working with a partner - and the activity was generally completed more accurately than usual.  One of the children, who is generally apathetic and loathe to complete work, said at the end "I know how to do those sentences now", with a real sense of achievement.

With Year 4 a couple of weeks ago, I gave the pairs a worksheet that had spaces for Spanish sentences and the translated English sentences.  They had to compose as many sentences as they could using the different parts of the present tense of tener, then translate the sentences into English.  The old adage of "two heads are better than one" was certainly true in this case.  The children said in their feedback that they enjoyed sharing ideas with someone they don't usually work with. 

Why not give it a try?  You don't have to have a special worksheet for it, any will do.

Writing without a pen

This morning I was having a look back at a post from 2009, the beginning of this blog.  In this post, I listed things I'd like to try in the classroom that I hadn't already tried.  Number 9 on the list of ten:

I've experimented with cut out letters to spell out words before (for example in my Soy prehistórico series of lessons) but haven't tried this particular activity.  I've made an activity for my Year 3 Spaniards, with whom I've just started Food and Opinions:

It'll take a bit of printing and cutting to get it ready (I pay my own children to do that kind of thing!) and we might do some other activities like these ones to help to memorise the spelling.  Children could also work on the words independently and photograph their work for evidence.  A similar activity could work with word cards, where the teacher says a sentence in English and the children have to put together that sentence in the target language.

"Writing" in this way is non-threatening for children, as they are not faced with a big empty page, and mistakes are easy to erase.  Writing with word cards rather than letters would work for older students for dictation and translation purposes.

If you'd like a copy of the above activity to try for yourself, you can download it from here.  There is also general set of Spanish letters here and French here.

Sugarcane

* UNFORTUNATELY, AS OF JUNE 2018, SUGARCANE IS NO MORE *

Sugarcane is an online, interactive activity generator.  You fill in a "Data Set", or grid, with the information that you would like to be included in the game, and then select the kind of game that you'd like.    Here is part of my data set about French numbers 1 to 12, from which I created several different games:

The content that you input can be as simple or as complex as you would like.  You'll need to create yourself an account if you'd like to keep your data sets and games.

The games can be played on tablets, computers or interactive whiteboards.  When you have finished playing a game, you get a score which you can then try to beat on the next round!  My classes like the matching games against the clock, taking turns on the whiteboard.

I think my favourite game is "What's Connected".  This is an example of a screen of the game with a data set of Spanish nouns and articles:

You have to find all boxes that are connected to the word at the top.  For example, for this one, you would need to click on una, la and 'window'.  For this to be effective you need to have several columns in your data set.

If you'd like to have a look at the data sets and games that I have already created, have a look at the Light Bulb Languages profile.

Grammar Challenge Cards

Following the success of my French Challenge Cards and Spanish Challenge Cards, I have published Grammar Challenge cards in both languages for Key Stages 3 and 4.

Both PDF packs include 50 different cards of 4 different levels, as well as a collection of grammar cards for further study and reference.

Click here for the French Grammar Challenge Cards and here for the Spanish Grammar Challenge Cards.