Most traditional textbooks teach spanish pronouns and ser as one of the very first grammar units. Through experience, I have learned that teaching the conjugations of ser before students know what conjugations are, is pointless.
Instead, I teach es and son as vocabulary words during storytelling and students acquire them naturally.
When it comes time to teach Spanish pronouns though, I spend a VERY long time on this! Regardless of my own preference to teach with CI methods, I know my students will eventually take a placement test that requires them to conjugate verbs the old fashioned way. Understanding pronouns in Spanish is key!
How to introduce Spanish pronouns
- I start by showing this pronoun video from School House Rock. Yes, it’s old, but it’s catchy! Flocabulary has a more updated version that you may prefer.
- After the video, I ask students to tell me the definition of a pronoun and to list some of the ones mentioned in the video. I write down the subject pronouns on the board organized in the order of a verb chart.
- Next I tell students that we will now learn how to say these words in Spanish. They stand and repeat these gestures after me.
As the video mentions, we write down the Spanish pronouns and go over the idea of singular and plural pronouns. I remind them that we used two hands to gesture for the plural pronouns in Spanish.
4. After this, we do quite a bit of written practice with Spanish pronouns, partner activities, songs, and games like Spanish pronoun tic-tac-toe.
I spend about 5 days (240 minutes) teaching the Spanish pronouns, which sounds like a ton of time, but the kids really do retain it!
Introducing AR verbs
As I mentioned before, after I teach the pronouns in Spanish, I move on to teaching how to conjugate regular AR verbs in Spanish. Students need to understand how the Spanish pronouns are the foundation of conjugating all verbs. So I show them how to conjugate regular verbs first. We spend another 5 days on AR verb vocabulary and how to conjugate regular verbs in Spanish before diving into conjugating the verb ser.
Teaching the verb ser
Now that students understand the pattern of spanish pronouns and regular conjugations, I tell them about the verb ser.
Ser is an irregular verb. It lives on its own island and doesn’t follow any of the rules. We have to memorize it.
I teach them this hand clap game and chant for the verb ser.
We do it a few times with an imaginary air partner. Then I have them rotate around the room to practice with multiple partners and see how fast they can do it. (During distance learning, just have them keep the beat somewhere on their body as they chant.)
Over the next few days, we do tons more activities using the verb ser in context including stories, listening activities, information gap activities, oral questioning, and another tic-tac-toe.
We are now ready to move into our unit on describing ourselves and others because we can use Spanish pronouns and conjugate the verb ser!
