Family_vocab

//This page is dedicated to collecting activities that teachers can use to teach students about family relationships in the target culture. One of the hardest things about this topic is ensuring that activities are culturally contextualized and don't just remain at the word level by focusing solely on the vocabulary. Also, be sure to exercise sensitivity toward students in your classes who may not have ideal families or who may not experience positive family relationships.//

[|Animal Adventures] - Have students get into groups, come to consensus on a particular animal, and then create a family tree for that animal and write the stories of the animal's family along the lines of Curious George or Peter Rabbit or Donald Duck (with the rich Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Hewey, Dewey, and Louie, a la Duck Tales). Here is an example of a [|page in German] that tells of the adventures of a family of guinea pigs. user:chericem1

[|Bibliography in Spanish of films/movies that depict various family problems, family structures, etc.] (scroll down to Page 2 to see the categorized list. Also, note that not all films are culturally authentic or in Spanish, and that many may not be appropriate for classroom use. This list is provided here as a potential springboard of ideas for teachers regarding both topics and films that might be used in a unit on families due to the variety of categories it includes.) user:chericem1

[|Creative Family Tree] - A project posted on FLTEACH by Dee Friel

La familia - A PowerPoint for introducing the family to students that includes lots of interesting images for students to discuss, very cool video clips in Spanish, worksheets, and activities (by Becca Proper) media type="custom" key="27659506"

[|La mejor familia del mundo] - A culturally authentic children's story read in slow, simple Spanish by a male native speaker. Lots of use of the conditional tense. media type="youtube" key="RjL_z6UcM0E" width="420" height="315"

[|Family Album] - A project posted on FLTEACH by Sue Alice Shay

Family Fan Mail - Have students choose a family member and write that person a "fan letter" in which they explain how the person has contributed to their family in important ways and why the person is special to them. Give students opportunities to translate one another's letters and/or to ask questions about the letters. user:chericem1

Family Traditions - Students bring several objects that represent cherished family traditions from their families (or traditions they hope to start with their own families some day). In conjunction with this project, you can involve students in exploring the family structures and traditions of people from the target cultures (such as the role that extended family members may play in the life of a young person, expectations re: working, moving out of the family home, etc.). user:chericem1

Familly Tree Info Gap user:mllegibbs

[|Family Tree Listening Comprehension Practice] - An activity posted to FLTEACH by Joann M. Kissell

[|Family Vocabulary Practice with Possessive Adjectives] - A group activity posted on FLTEACH by Roxann Trenda

user:blitzsar
 * Famous Families -** While we were learning family vocab, I chose two famous families - the Simpsons and the Addams Family - wrote the family members' names on the picture and ages and made an overhead transparency. I then prepared questions for the students to practice their vocab, as well as asking questions and answering them in complete sentences. For example, //Como se llama la madre de la familia Simpsons? Cuantos anos tiene Bart? Uncle Fester es el __ de Pugsley y Wednesday.// The students were highly interested in these activities!

Flannel Board Families - I have flannel board people and also laminated pictures of various families (with conveniently color-coded shirts) that I picked up in a clearance bin at a teacher supply store). Students LOVE to have me put them up on the magnetic chalkboard or a flannel board, and then dictate stories to me about the family tree and the various activities of the family. We move the characters around and draw scenery as needed to support the story with colored chalk. user:chericem1

Funny Families - Have students cut photos out of magazines to create crazy families. These families could be "In Your Dreams" kind of families, families that would appear on the Dr. Phil Show, families you'd find on a reality TV show (like The Nanny or Survivor or something), etc. Then have students write a commercial, teaser, or trailer for the show in which they explain who each person is and why/how this will play into the show. You could also use this activity to practice a variety of tenses, "If Rosie O'Donnell //were// my mother, we //would// . . . and my dad would, and the neighbors would . . . ." As a variation on this activity, you can divide students into groups, give each group a stack of pictures of famous people, and ask them to write about what would happen if all of those people were to belong to the same family. user:chericem1

Geneology - Teach Spanish students the ways in which naming conventions in Spanish-speaking countries actually allow a person to track the geneology of a family. Then show them tools for tracing their own geneology, such as [|Cyndi's List], [|Family Search], or [|Ancestry.com] and have them create annotated family trees in which they not only list the names of their family members and label the family relationships, but also provide a brief annotation about the unique contributions that this person has made to the family. For more advanced classes, students could prepare family histories or could volunteer to help target-language speakers in the community prepare their family histories in the target language by interviewing them about their families. I've seen some classes prepare booklets that capture the oral histories of a variety of people from the community (these might be people that live in the neighborhood around the school, or people in the community), then present them at a special reception to which community members, community officials, parents, and school officials are invited. user:chericem1

[|Ideas for Teaching Family Vocab.] - A lengthy list of ideas from Dee Friel posted to FLTEACH user:chericem1

user:Bubblewrapper
 * Impersonal projects** - In a similar vein to what Cherice suggested below (Personal PowerPoints), students pick celebrities they'd like to have as members of their families, and introduce them as though they are. Students used the template below for four celebrity-family members. Later on, these got turned into Jumpcut projects, where students recorded themselves saying their introductions using either [|Gcast]or [|Audacity], then uploaded the audio to [|Jumpcut], and synced it to images they got off of google image search.

[|Materiales: Vida familiar] - This issue of //Materiales,// produced by the educational division of the Embassy of Spain, contains a host of downloadable, culturally authentic activities and materials in Spanish designed for use in the secondary classroom.

Personal PowerPoints - Have students create PowerPoint presentations in which they introduce their 5 favorite family members to the rest of the class using images, text, and music. These family members can be real or fictitious. Baby books are another nice variation on this project. Students create a simple album of their childhood in which family members figure prominently. user:chericem1

[|Society Pages] - An activity posted to FLTEACH by Prawet Jantharat.

Spain's Royal Family - To practice family vocabulary, I talked about Spain's royal Family. I used a PowerPoint (It's here in 2 parts because it's so big!) and had the students fill in a worksheet as we went along, and they also had a follow up assignment, but they all paid so much attention that I wouldn't have needed a worksheet to keep them focused. I put comments on the notes section of the PowerPoint for those of you who don't know very much about the royal family. I related a lot of things to current events, so you may want to update (this version is from 5/2008) in order to keep this current. user:richa521





[|Stimulating Simulations] - An activity posted to FLTEACH by Michelle Moyer.


 * Sentence Strips** to teach family-related vocabulary (aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.):
 * Write on long strips of construction paper sentences like the following: //El hermano de mi madre es mi...//, or, //El padre de mi tia es mi...//
 * Write about 12 or however many you feel is appropriate. Adhere the strips to the chalkboard with magnets.
 * Now you can pair students off, or, have them work in teams. Give each pair or team another piece of construction paper that says //abuelo,// or, //tio//.
 * You can have students come to the front one at a time to place their word with the right sentence, or have them race to see who can get the right answers fastest. It is pretty fun and asks students to think about who is who in the familial relationship.user:SarahPcat

I used the idea listed above and wrote on the yellow strips //El hermano de mi madre es mi...// and other similar sentences (enough for an entire class). On green strips I wrote the vocabulary word the finished the sentence, i.e. //tio//. Eventually I had about 4 or 5 of the same vocabulary word that fit with multiple sentences, i.e. //La padre de mi primo, El hermano de mi padre es mi..., etc.// At first I was going to distribute 1/2 of the yellow sheets to 1/2 of the class, and 1/2 of the green sheets the other half and have them find their partners only speaking Spanish. Since I felt this would be too chatic, I decided to switch up their seats during the week we focused on family vocab. I taped the yellow sheets on each of the desks. As the students walked in on the first day, they were handed a green sheet. Their task was to find the sentence that matched the family member listed on yellow sheet. The desk that matched their family member was their seat for that day. This provided the students with new scenary for the day, as well as gave them an opportunity to practice the vocab. I used this strategy throughout this past week, and plan to use the format on Friday's vocab quiz! user:blitzsar
 * Sentence Strips (a variation)**

[|Uncommon Commonalities] - An activity posted to FLTEACH by Laurie Kimoto

[|Who's in My Wallet] - An activity posted to FLTEACH by Paula Jones

=Videos=

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I used this video on Día de la Familia with my older students [grades 4-6]. We paused it around 0:28 and talked about how the little girl says that, for her, family is her mom and siblings. We talked about how every family is different, which led to some great class discussions. Even if you have the same number of family members as someone else, each person is different, so every family is different. user:eddingtona

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Use this video to help students think / write / talk about what family means to them (present tense), what they have learned from their families (present perfect, etc), what they want to teach their future families... user:eddingtona

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Students can use this video [or any of the other "Mi familia" videos from Canal Pakapaka] to create a dialogue between the characters or to predict what will happen next. You can also use it as a starting point for students to write or talk about their own family relationships or experiences they've had with family members. You can do a lot with a video that doesn't have any dialogue! :) user:eddingtona