Grow your garden in Spanish

Date: July 31, 2015

Time: 1-3 hours a week

Materials needed: outdoor garden area

Student level: Secondary Spanish students intermediate to advanced level

Learning Standard: Common Core

           Presentational writing

3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well chosen details, and well structured event sequences

Language

1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard grammar and usage when writing or speaking

Overview:

Plant and grow an outdoor garden to practice tense changes and broaden Spanish vocabulary base.

Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, participants will be able to effectively use present, preterit, future, and progressive forms of the verbs utilized when speaking about the garden. Students will also have increased their vocabulary range to include a broader range of fruits, vegetables, and verbs.

Warm-up activities/review:

1. Have the students choose which fruits and vegetables they want to grow.
2. Instructor presents a review of the grammatical tense rules specific to what students will be working with that week.
3. Have students use UC Davis’s “A Garden of Words” (see link below) to find the correct vocabulary words to express themselves in the new environment.

Instructions:

Week 1: Plant the garden. Have students say what they are doing and what they are planting in Spanish. Students will also write out a description of the day in Spanish in their gardening diary. The instructor can review the written work and provide feedback.

Week 2: Review the preterit tense and have students talk about what they did last week in the garden. Also have students comment verbally and/or in writing about the current state of the garden. What will they have to do next week?

Week 3 and beyond: Each week have the students describe how the garden looked last week, how it looks now, and what they think it will look like in the future. Also ask students to talk about what they did last week, what they are doing now, and what they will have to do in the future.

Variations for special needs:

Provide tense charts with the appropriate endings for students to refer to regularly.

Provide written prompts that students must put in the correct order or fill in the correct word in the correct form.

Variations for accelerated students:

Ask students to compare how the garden was habitually tended or grown (imperfect) with what was done the current year (preterit).

Ask students to talk about what they would do next year using the conditional form.

Assessment:

Assess student gardening diary.

Conversational assessment in the garden. Walking through the garden with the instructor, the student will be able to comfortably engage in conversation about the plants in the garden and the work done in the garden.

 Helpful Links:

anrcatalog.ucanr.edu – glossary with resources

https://cassieliversidge.com/a-spanish-lesson-in-the-garden/ – pictures with words

Share this.