Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership

Alleyn’s School – Mr Philip Harper

Year 7 Spanish Spelling Bee

Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership

Alleyn’s School – Mr Philip Harper

Year 7 Spanish Spelling Bee

Contents

1. Lesson plans

2. Teacher resources

3. Rules and word lists

4. Pupil resources

Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership Project

Alleyn’s School – Philip Harper

Spanish Spelling Bee – for Year 7 pupils

Overall objective : to practise and improve their vocabulary, spelling and

memory skills in another language.

Lesson 1

Objective – to learn how to say and understand the different Spanish letters.

Activities :

1. Drill alphabet.

2. Alphabet song

3. Listening – pupils spell classroom objects p12 + p14 (Mira 1)

4. Homework - create posters to help them memorise the sound of each letter – connect

to culture eg T – toro

Lesson 2 (observed by Luisa Alonso from JAGS)

Objective -

a) to understand the rules

b) to revise how to say the letters of the alphabet

c) to practise before the competition starts

d) to reflect on how to memorise vocabulary

Activities :

1. Hand out rules and go through them with the class.

2. Alphabet song (to the tune of ‘I don’t know but it’s been said…)

3. Explain how to do accents (con tilde), pass (paso) & space (espacio).

4. I say word in English and elicit translations and spellings of Stage 1 words from

pupils who volunteer, then reveal word on powerpoint. (7-10 words) – pupils with

alphabet chart in front of them.

5. I hand out the full list of 50 Stage 1 words and elicit strategies for memorising them.

6. Pupils have 5 mins to memorise these words. They will have come across most before

and should focus on difficult or unknown words.

7. Pupils volunteer to come and practise in front of the class. This time without the chart

to support them. Project an online stopwatch onto the board.

8. Homework – the list of 50 Stage 2 words is given to them and they will have a week

to learn these prior to the competition starting for real.

Lesson 3

Objective : to be able to follow the rules and compete fairly and sensibly and have fun

remembering words!

Activity : Stage 2 word competition. There could be a plate competition for 1st round losers

– approx. the 10 best go through.

NB – any misbehaviour will lead to disqualification.

Lesson 4

Activity : Stage 3 word competition – approx. the 5 best go through.

Lesson 5

Objective : to make wider school community aware of the competition and possibly expand

to include all classes in future years.

Activity : THE FINAL – Stage 4 word competition – this will be videoed and shown at

Lower School Assembly (with the permission of the participants) and each finalist will

receive a small prize.

STRATEGIES FOR VOCABULARY LEARNING

1. Spend 15-20 minutes on it initially and then 5 minutes per day

consolidating in the days leading up to the test. Little and often is

more effective than learning it all in one go.

2. Try the LOOK-COVER-SAY-WRITE-CHECK method.

3. Learn accurately – accents and gender are important.

4. Work with a partner or parent to test yourself.

5. Make use of ‘dead time’ (eg waiting for a bus, walking to games etc)

to go over the words in your head.

6. Say the ‘un’ or ‘une’ ; ‘un’ or ‘una’ with emphasis. This will help

you to remember if it is masculine or feminine. The ending of a word

will often give a clue as to its gender.

7. Say your verb conjugations in a rhythm or chant and repeat them

several times until the patterns are lodged in your memory.

8. Make sure you learn Eng → Fr/Sp and vice-versa.

9. Record your vocab on to your i-pod : English word → Pause →

Foreign word. Listen and say the foreign word in the Pause time.

10. Think of links between the English word and the Foreign word to

make it more memorable. (vilain = ugly – villain in English)

11. Devise strategies which work for you. Get into a successful routine

and stick to it.

12. Share strategies : talk to others who are successful and find out how

they go about it.

Make your learning a MULTISENSORY experience rather than

staring glumly at a page!

Competition rules :

1. You will be tested individually and will not use any prompts.

2. You will have one minute to translate and correctly spell as many words

as possible in the Target Language.

3. The teacher will choose the words in random order and will say the

words in English. You will then say the word in the Target Language

and then spell it using the Target Language alphabet. If you don’t know

a word you can pass. If you make a mistake the teacher will move on.

4. You will receive one point per word correctly translated and spelt

within the time. If you begin a word when the timer goes, you will be

able to finish.

5. If there is a tied score, a sudden-death round will be played:

You will take it in turns to correctly spell a word.

If you spell a word incorrectly, you are out.

This will continue until there is one winner and one runner-up.

In a class of 25-30. Approximately 10 pupils will progress to the next

stage of the competition. 5 pupils will progress to the final.

What does the accent look like? What is its name?

á é í ó ú ñ tilde

ü dieresis

Space – espacio

Pass – paso

Hyphen - guión

Article on Spelling Bee – by Prutthik Puvanendiran

Published in the School Newsletter

The Spelling Bee is a competition where we had to memorise words which Mr

Harper, our Spanish teacher, asked us. This competition was English to Spanish.

Mr Harper told us the English word and we had to say the say the Spanish word

and then we had to spell it in Spanish. If we didn't know the word, we would

say ‘paso’, which means pass. There is a quarter final, semi-final and a final. In

the quarter final everyone in our class competed but at the end of the round,

sadly people got knocked out. Then there was a semi-final, where we had to

memorise even harder words than the quarter-final, and a few more people got

knocked out at the end of the round. Finally, it was the final which the Head of

Languages, Mrs Thornton and many other important people came to watch.

Everyone in the finals was very nervous, because there were many cameras

flashing at us while we spoke and lots of people were watching us. This was the

hardest round where we had to translate English words in 1 and a half minutes

but in the other rounds we had to translate words in only 1 minute. At the end of

the round the cameraman took a picture of all the finalists, who were Sonny,

Saskia, James, Marina and Prutthik. James came 5th, Saskia came 4th, Prutthik

came 3rd, Sonny came 2nd and Marina came 1st. All the finalists worked very

hard, as did everyone else. The Spelling Bee really helped us because we knew

how it felt like with many people watching us and cameras flashing at us. Also,

it gave us a head start because most of the words that we had to memorise, were

words which we hadn't learnt so when we get to the higher topics, we will know

a lot.