Weeks 1 & 2
These lessons introduce simple everyday phrases in Spanish such as “Donde esta…” (where is) and “No lo sé” (I don’t know). They are introduced in the videos without written meaning and repeated often.
We did the name & number worksheet activities that go with these lessons.
Weeks 3 & 4
Be ready to be introduced to lots of new vocabulary; time, salutations, prepositions, grids, measurements, prepositions and basic multiplication & numbers.
The children did the worksheet activities about prepositions.
We also did an additional activity which was to make our own grid with circles and used clothing vocabulary to fill in the coordinates as they were read out by each student in Spanish.
An activity to do on a nice day would be to practice the long jump & measure how far the children jump in Spanish to practice numbers. Also count in Spanish how many times you keep the ball in the air in a game of bat & ball the first one to drop the ball or not know the number is out.
We also made giant numbers 1 – 4 and colored them in using the colours of the national flags of Spain, Argentina & Mexico and included the word form of each number below.
We also made simple maths equations with the numbers (por=times, mas=add & menos=minus). This is where the older children could practice with more complicated multiplications.
Week 5 & 6
This video is all about colours, visiting an art gallery and taking part in a “subasta” (auction). This video was great for us as we have been learning about different art and have recently attended museum workshops in Warrington & Liverpool.
These units also introduce animals (to describe the paintings). We talked about nouns (naming words) and that in Spanish they can be either male or female. We looked at pictures of animals from the Usborne book “First Thousand words in Spanish” & I asked the children ¿”Es un …”? (is it a …?) they responded “si, es un …” (yes, it’s a …) or “no, no es un … es un …” (no, it’s not a …, it’s a …).
We did do the suggested activity in week 5 which was to prepare phrases from the previous week’s videos and let the children bet on the ones they thought were correct. However, there is a lot of preparation required for this activity, (as the previous lessons videos need to be revisited), it would be good for this activity to be prepared as a worksheet ready to be used by parents.
Summary
I must say that when we began week one I was a little concerned about the content of the video and that possibly the worksheets were too easy for eight+ year olds. But as we have progressed through the program the video content has gone from strength to strength and the quality of this content is complimented with excellent exercises in the worksheets. It became clear that there is a vast amount of information that can be used for further learning in addition to the worksheets & additional activities mentioned. So plenty to get your teeth into!
The programme is still in its first month, so it is no surprise that there are some teething issues and adjustments to be made (some of the worksheets are still missing and there are some privacy issues when accessing the programme from a tablet). I communicated these problems to Jim and also made some suggestions as to what improvements I feel are necessary – in particular referencing the videos, lessons and worksheets so they are easier to identify as well as some other comments about the general use and feel of the resource. He was very receptive and has already made some of changes…very encouraging!
For more informationabout Speekee Online programmes and resources visit the website www.speekee.com.
Next post will cover weeks 7-12 🙂