Class theme/topics discussed: Differences between Halloween in the US and in Spain
Goals of the class: learn Halloween vocabulary in Spanish and learn about Halloween traditions in Spain. Learn how to conjugate the verb “to dress up” (disfrazarse).
How did you structure the class?
- 5 min: warm-up exercise where we talked about our plans for Halloween and about what we did during Halloweekend.
- 10 min: I displayed images of typical Halloween things (pumpkin, ghosts, vampires…) and I also displayed their names in Spanish, and they had to match the pictures to their names talking to their classmates.
- 20 min: I displayed the conjugation of the verb “to dress up” in the TV and they had to ask each other questions regarding their Halloween costumes using the correct verb tense and conjugation.
- 15 min: later, I displayed images and videos of how All Saints Day (1st November) is celebrated in Spain and we discussed their origins and differences in comparation to the US.
- 10 min: lastly, each of them had to present in front of the class a Halloween tradition that they would do when they were little and, if they had, show a picture.
What technology, media or props did you use? (Internet resources, handouts, etc.)
Canva presentation and Youtube.
What worked well in this class? What did not work?
The part where they explained their own Halloween traditions went super well because I could see that they wanted to share with the rest of the class their own experience. They were also super surprised when I talked about how we don’t celebrate Halloween, but we celebrate All Saints Day. I feel that the first exercise didn’t go that well in comparison because they didn’t know any of the Spanish words for the Halloween items, so they were a bit lost.
How could this class be improved/ modified?
I think that if I had to do this class again, I would give them more context in the first exercise. I thought that I would be easy to match the words to the pictures (vampire is vampiro, ghost is fantasma, which I thought they would connect with phantom, etc.). I thought they would follow more their intuition, but they were just trying to guess their meanings randomly. I think that next time I would bring a little text or a description in Spanish of each item that contextualizes more each word.