Early Start Spanish 1: Tú y Yo

13: ¿Tienes alguna mascota? - Have you got a pet?

Early Start Spanish 1: CONTENTS | HOME

Introducing nouns and gender

Swap drawings of pupils' pets with your link school

Reading in Spanish: "Puppy Finds a Friend"

Data handling - suggested software

If you have not yet purchased the pack:
Download FREE sample (low bandwidth quality) complete video clips from this section

What you will learn in section 13
Your class will learn how to talk about their pets - and find out about other people's. This also introduces them to a lot more Spanish nouns.

"I've got a cat" - "I've got a dog"

(left) Children brought their pets into school and drew them for the video.
(right) She decides to buy a fish in the town pet shop - it is sold in a plastic bag.

Teachers we have worked with find this is a good opportunity to lay sound foundations for children's understanding of gender in languages like Spanish.

In the video, children see that there are two Spanish words - un and una - that can mean a (an) or one. Un is used with some words, and una with others. After the class has seen the video, they talk with children about how all Spanish nouns, whether referring to people, animals, things or ideas are either masculine or feminine.

Un goes with the masculine nouns, and una with the feminine ones.

The idea of masculine and feminine is quite logical when referring to people. For pet animals, it's less obvious (why should a fish be masculine and a tortoise feminine?) - but children get used to it.

Some teachers find this is a good time in the course to begin putting up colourful displays of Spanish words on the classroom walls. They take care to indicate the gender of nouns by including un or una - and often use colour-coding.

Fortunately, children soon discover there is agood rule of thumb: nouns ending in -o are masculine, and most of those ending in -a are feminine.

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Swap drawings of pupils' pets with your link school

Spanish child's drawing of his pet budgie

To download a larger version for printing, click here. [400k Acrobat file]

Children can scan their drawings and send them with a brief voice message by email - use this software - NETCARD from TAG Learning.

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Reading in Spanish: "Puppy Finds a Friend"

Puppy finds a Friend - Spanish-English bilingual book
It's Saturday and Puppy wants to play.
He tries his farmyard friends but they all have something more important to do. Will he have to play alone, or can he find a friend after all?
- find out more>

Book also available Price: £

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Data handling software for Primary Spanish

When you introduce Spanish into the primary school curriculum, it is a good idea to use the language in otherwise familiar contexts across the curriculum.

If your class is already learning to use software for data handling, it is best to carry on using the same package for the Spanish work.

The NEW and useful elements will be:

they collect the data from other pupils (or whoever) using questions and answers in Spanish

they continue practising Spanish so far as possible when entering the data at the keyboard

they present their findings in graphs and diagrams labelled in Spanish

We have not found any software where all the menus and program dialogues are in Spanish. With young beginners, this would probably involve exposing them to too much and too difficult vocabulary too soon. So we recommend using the same software that you use across the curriculum, and to discuss in English any problems that arise when you are using the program, (or the normal class language) as you would in other lessons.

"Survey" from Software Production Associates (SPA)

1. Collecting your data in a survey of pets 2. Building up a pictogram display of the survey results

"Survey" is an easy program for children to use:
it helps them conduct surveys by themselves, prints out blank sheets for tallying the data (on which Spanish words can be used), and enables them to graph the results in a variety of formats with Spanish labels - including bar charts, pictograms and pie charts, which are suitable for the activities suggested in the Early Start Spanish starter pack.

For more information,go to www.spasoft.co.uk - where free demonstration copies of software can be downloaded. You can buy direct on-line if you wish.

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What you will learn in section 13 Your class will learn how to talk about their pets - and find out about other people's. This also introduces them to a lot more Spanish nouns.
"I've got a cat" - "I've got a dog"
(left) Children brought their pets into school and drew them for the video. (right) She decides to buy a fish in the town pet shop - it is sold in a plastic bag.
Teachers we have worked with find this is a good opportunity to lay sound foundations for children's understanding of gender in languages like Spanish. In the video, children see that there are two Spanish words - un and una - that can mean a (an) or one. Un is used with some words, and una with others. After the class has seen the video, they talk with children about how all Spanish nouns, whether referring to people, animals, things or ideas are either masculine or feminine. Un goes with the masculine nouns, and una with the feminine ones. The idea of masculine and feminine is quite logical when referring to people. For pet animals, it's less obvious (why should a fish be masculine and a tortoise feminine?) - but children get used to it. Some teachers find this is a good time in the course to begin putting up colourful displays of Spanish words on the classroom walls. They take care to indicate the gender of nouns by including un or una - and often use colour-coding. Fortunately, children soon discover there is agood rule of thumb: nouns ending in -o are masculine, and most of those ending in -a are feminine.

Spanish child's drawing of his pet budgie
To download a larger version for printing, click here. [400k Acrobat file]	Children can scan their drawings and send them with a brief voice message by email - use this software - NETCARD from TAG Learning.