Music and Spanish Fun: March 2016

Cinco Monitos Story Cards

Click here to purchase Cinco Monitos Story Cards

I created these cards I call “story cards” to encourage language development. These cards are a great way to engage students in talking in the target language!

These story cards were created to go along with the Five Little Monkeys story; an all time favorite that kids enjoy very much. They particularly love doing the actions involved in the story.

I read the Five Little Monkeys to them in Spanish using the story book. Even though the story in this book is in English, I tell it to them in Spanish. They have a Spanish version too but the book is significantly smaller. I prefer using this one becausethe images are bigger.

I use this story as an opportunity to create an immersion type of situation by asking questions in the target language and hearing back from the students. So I ask the questions in Spanish. It’s amazing how students will intuitively understand and answer correctly most of the time even is their responses are in English. This proves that children have a natural ability to correlate and understand.

So I will share here a few extra ideas of how I use this story to create and encourage language development. Again, these are just some ideas, but feel free to share yours as well!

After students are familiar with the story, it’s a good idea to engage them by asking some simple questions. This is where the story cards come in handy.

Pick a card and show to the students. You can ask questions such as:

Click here to purchase Cinco Monitos Story Cards

1. ¿Cuántos monitos hay en la cama?

2. ¿Qué le pasó al monito?

3. ¿Por qué se cayó el monito?

4. ¿El monito se golpeó la cabeza o la nariz?

5. ¿A quién llamó mamá?

6. ¿Qué le dijo el doctor?

You can ask the same questions for the other cards.

I normally don't ask all these questions at the same time.

I pick two or three questions and consistently ask them over again for a few weeks until students get use to listening to the questions and be able to answer accordingly. You can help students by asking the questions and also answering them. In no time at all they will be answering the questions all by themselves.

For the older kids 5 and up I do the following activities to engage in listening and speaking. (This is done after children are well familiar with the story)

1. The student becomes the doctor: (This is to help develop memory and speech) When reading the story, I select a random student to be the doctor. So in the part where it says: “mamá llamó el doctor (I substitute a child’s name for doctor) so I will say:”mamá llamó a Jazmine y Jazmine dijo…… (at this point Jazmine should say: “que ya no brinquen los monitos en la cama”. And each time we go around the story again, I call out a different name. Students love it and they are listening and waiting to see who will be next to be the doctor. This is simple but it really encourages students to speak and in doing so it helps them in the proper pronunciation for those that need more help in that aspect. I must say that many of the children have develop clear pronunciation.

2. Making the correction: (This is to encourage listening skills) I start the story. At the part of the story where says: “uno se cayó y se pegó la cabeza” (I substitute another part of the body for cabeza) so for example I would say: “uno se cayó y se pegó la nariz”. (The children have so much fun to hear me say something different and are thrill to correct me and they say to me: “¡no, it’s la cabeza!” and then I will say: “ oh! ok…..la cabeza! and so on…. so now they are very attentive listening to what I’m going to say next. (so I use, nariz, brazo, orejas, etc…) they really enjoy it and have lots of fun. At the end they will say I’m funny!

Another one I use is saying: “cinco monitos brincando en la silla”. Immediately they say: “no! it’s la cama”.

3. Dramatization: (This is to encourage speech, TPR and listening) Here I select seven students at a time. Five of them will be the little monkeys and one the mama and the other the doctor. As I start narrating the story, the five students are jumping (doing the action) when they heard the part: “uno se cayó” one of the students will fall. And I will continue with the story and the other students will participate at the appropriate time in the story. Again, they love it!

4. Selecting a narrator: This is the same as # 3 with the difference that a student is selected to narrate the story while the other students do the dramatization. (This help students tremendously to engage and feel comfortable speaking the target language. It eases the intimidation that some students might experience when learning a new language.

To purchase the Cinco Monitos Story Cards click here.

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Friday, March 25, 2016

Cinco Monitos Activities