Irregular Preterite and other yucky things

We all know that our students will see, hear, and use things like the subjunctive and irregular preterite verbs but it just isn’t any fun to watch them struggle to acquire them when we attack it backward.  I spent many a year chanting, pounding the desks, and sending home 6 conjugations for homework to still get back papers with yo tener in level 4.  UGH…

Several years ago I made some changes in my classroom and began to teach verb chunks as useable structure.  I can teach ANYTHING from subjunctive chunks in level 1 to irregular preterite verbs in context but I am careful to keep it engaging and filled with input!

As I changed jobs and began teaching with a colleague who hadn’t been trained yet in CI, I knew that she was willing and able to use lots of language in class but she didn’t have the training I did!  It was a pickle!  So we bought Martina Bex’s SOMOS curriculum.  I am telling you, this is a magic bullet!  It let her learn all about how to teach in target with clear instructions, through lesson plans, and engaging activities.  Even a nod or two to grammar as she was detoxing from the textbook!

I have always liked using Martina’s units in level 2 because while we’ve been exposed to past, present, and future in level 1, we are really working on narrative in these tenses in level 2!  Martina’s materials have GREAT stories to work all the different idiosyncrasies of the past tenses.  This week we’ve been in SOMOS 2 Unit 6 “El secreto”.

As I was listening to one of my current earworms, Suena el dembow, I realized it had many of the same verbs we were using in Unit 6 and even some we used in the first 5 units!  I was so excited!  Tuve, Supe, Vine, Acercarme (from unit 2)… It was GREAT!

I made this song of the week packet to go along with it.  If you’re looking for a fun way to get reps of past tense verbs in action, maybe this is it!

 

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