There are loads of amazing tools online that allow me to make resources, worksheets and exercises in a tenth of the time it would take to do it on my own.
There are also some fantastic blogs, websites and resources that I often check out and learn from.
I'll keep this page updated with my favourites, and if you know of any that should be here please let me know in the comments!
Wordle - great for making word clouds, totally free, and super easy to use.
Wordsearch Maker - free, easy to use, very simple software (I think even a very old computer could handle it!)
Quizlet - awesome site to practice vocabulary. You need a free account, but then you can make any number of sets of "Flash cards" with pictures, and play games to learn.
SpanishDict - really reliable and has audio for pronunciation too.
Pancomido - another teacher's blog that explains things really well and had a lot of great links
Crossword Maker - free, easy to use, very simple software (I think even a very old computer could handle it!)
TES.co.uk - you need an account but it's free. Can be a bit of a mixed bag, but when you sort through the rubbish there are some great resources.
Saturday 27 June 2015
Friday 26 June 2015
Exercises, printables and resources.
There are going to be a lot of resources, free printable worksheets, and puzzles and exercises on YellowSprayPaint, and they're gong to be scattered around the place depending on what they're about.
However, you'll also be able to find them all here.
Please feel free to use any of these resources, and if you're a teacher you can photocopy them to your heart's content, just please leave the copyright notice and attribution at the bottom in the footer.*
* Obviously don't sell any of my work, that would be very bad form.
Thursday 25 June 2015
The Infinitive and Conjugating Verbs
The infinitive is what we call a verb in it's simplest form. If you look up a verb in the dictionary you look up the infinitive form of that verb.
The infinitive has two parts - The stem and the ending.
In Spanish the endings of verbs are always either -ar, -er, or -ir.
So, for example, if you see the word Hablar, you can see that it ends with an -ar, so it's a verb.
Lets look it up.
Hablar means "to speak".
(you can see in this picture that there's much more information in the dictionary too. I'm going to write a post on how to use the dictionary soon, so that you can find the right information when you look up words. If it sounds silly to learn how to use a dictionary then just go and look up the word "face" in a Spanish/English dictionary, and come back and tell me which of those words you think you'll use!)
The Stem is habl and the ending is ar
The infinitive form of a verb, like hablar, is a little bit like a form where only one part has been filled in
Conjugating a verb is like adding the rest of the information to the form.
One conjugation of hablar is hablamos:
You can see that the stem stayed the same (habl) but the ending changed from -ar to -amos, and you can also see that now the whole form is filled out! That little ending, -amos, packs a punch. It tells us who is doing the verb, and when it is happening. Hablamos means: "We speak".
Hablamos el Español.
Hablamos el Ingles.
We're not going to look at all the endings right here. In the next post I'm going to cover Regular Verbs, like hablar, and the endings we put on them in the present tense.
So, to recap, those are two main reasons to know your infinitives:
For example:
Quiero hablar contigo.
I want "to speak" with you
Quiero is conjugated and means "I want", so you don't need to conjugate hablar because we already have information about who and when.
Here are some puzzles and exercises to help you remember all of that!
Spot the verb
Verbsearch 1 Verbsearch 2
Separate the verbs into -ar, -er, and -ir verbs
Spot the infinitive
Crossverb
Coming soon:
Find the Stem
Verb information forms
The infinitive has two parts - The stem and the ending.
In Spanish the endings of verbs are always either -ar, -er, or -ir.
So, for example, if you see the word Hablar, you can see that it ends with an -ar, so it's a verb.
Lets look it up.
Hablar means "to speak".
(you can see in this picture that there's much more information in the dictionary too. I'm going to write a post on how to use the dictionary soon, so that you can find the right information when you look up words. If it sounds silly to learn how to use a dictionary then just go and look up the word "face" in a Spanish/English dictionary, and come back and tell me which of those words you think you'll use!)
The Stem is habl and the ending is ar
The infinitive form of a verb, like hablar, is a little bit like a form where only one part has been filled in
Conjugating a verb is like adding the rest of the information to the form.
One conjugation of hablar is hablamos:
You can see that the stem stayed the same (habl) but the ending changed from -ar to -amos, and you can also see that now the whole form is filled out! That little ending, -amos, packs a punch. It tells us who is doing the verb, and when it is happening. Hablamos means: "We speak".
Hablamos el Español.
Hablamos el Ingles.
We're not going to look at all the endings right here. In the next post I'm going to cover Regular Verbs, like hablar, and the endings we put on them in the present tense.
So, to recap, those are two main reasons to know your infinitives:
- You need to know the infinitive of a verb if you want to look it up in the dictionary.
- You need to know the infinitive of a verb if you're going to conjugate it (and talk about how you used to swim every day, or say you will do you're homework later).
For example:
Quiero hablar contigo.
I want "to speak" with you
Quiero is conjugated and means "I want", so you don't need to conjugate hablar because we already have information about who and when.
Here are some puzzles and exercises to help you remember all of that!
Spot the verb
Verbsearch 1 Verbsearch 2
Separate the verbs into -ar, -er, and -ir verbs
Spot the infinitive
Crossverb
Coming soon:
Find the Stem
Verb information forms
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