Presenting...¡España!

Fifth Grade Spanish Culture Presentations:

Fifth grade students are currently presenting their Google slides on Spanish culture to the class. This is the first time I assigned this project and I received so much positive feedback from students, that I would implement it with future classes. Students really controlled most of the learning: from choosing their topic, to having input on the rubric to teaching the class about their topic, and yet were still able to achieve our learning goals. 

Researching España

First students did a scavenger hunt to learn about España and to give them some ideas of topics to investigate more about. I gave students about 10 questions (in Spanish) that they needed to answer by finding the bags around my classroom.  One was full of real Spanish products like olive oil and Spanish olives, while others had items from my trips to Spain (castanets, ticket to a futbol game, a magazine on bullfighting, etc.). There were also a few short videos on the iPads about tourist attractions and soccer teams. 

After learning basic facts in Spanish, we moved onto our projects. I have to give a lot of credit to my colleagues who did this project before I did. They had a lot of wonderful ideas and suggestions!  I had students come up with a topic they wanted to learn more about, based on questions students had after the scavenger hunt.  Popular ones were: Real Madrid and other fútbol teams, the royal family, Spanish foods, Spanish fashions, and the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting. Many students taught the class a few Spanish words related to their topic, but presented mostly in English. I think they would not have enjoyed this as much with the frustration of having to translate. 
Here are some sample slides: