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Extra Credit

Flash Cards:

Create flash cards of our current chapter's vocabulary and/or grammar. On one side of each card will be a Spanish term, and on the other side will be either the English equivalent or a picture that represents that Spanish term. Show me your flash cards to receive extra credit points. Then study with them. Anyone can drill you with the cards, whether they know any Spanish or not.

Try to focus on just the words you are having trouble with. Drill with the cards by reading, writing, listening, and speaking them out. READING means looking at both sides of the flash cards and becoming familiar with them. WRITING means someone flashes the card at you for a moment, and then five seconds later you re-write the word. This forces you to remember how to spell the word. LISTENING means someone hides the flash cards from your view as he or she reads them to you. You identify what each one means out loud. SPEAKING means someone asks you for the information on the cards, and you have to say the terms out loud. One site where you can make digital flash cards is here.

Online Exercises:

Visit our textbook's website. Print out and do any exercises from our current chapter for extra credit points. Every two online exercises count as one extra credit assignment. Please make sure you click on the textbook for your level of Spanish. Visit my Links page here to find the online exercises.

Self-evaluation Form:

Students may fill out a self-evaluation form with their parents for extra credit points once per quarter. This provides an opportunity to assess the students' strengths and weaknesses. It also helps to determine strategies for improvement and success.

Modern Media Practice:

Students may fill out a Modern Media Practice Log that shows how often they visited modern media in order to practice reading, listening to, and understanding Spanish through sources published in Spanish. Such sources may include newspapers, gazettes, magazines, manuals, novels, novellas/readers, pamphlets/flyers, web sites, television, radio, etc. All sources must be appropriate for school. Visiting these resources provides students the opportunity to learn new vocabulary and grammatical structures within real-life contexts. They may learn current events, sociology, history, relationships, technology, theology, science, geography, climate, travel skills, or any other set of knowledge and skills through these extracurricular studies for extra credit.

Speaking Practice:

Students may fill out a Speaking Practice Log that shows how often they practiced speaking completely in Spanish in order to improve pronunciation, word choice (diction), rate of speech, and overall fluency. All speaking activities must be appropriate for school. The native speaker may be bilingual or multilingual or speak only Spanish (monolingual), but only Spanish is to be used. Completing these activities provides students the opportunity to learn new thematic vocabulary and grammatical structures within real-life contexts. Through these extracurricular studies, they may learn about current events, culture, sociology, history, family stories, relationships, technology, theology, science, geography, climate, travel skills, self-improvement, or any other set of knowledge and skills useful in life, especially in Spanish-speaking areas. Students may want to gear their chosen activities toward any future careers of interest.

You can access a free voice recorder on your computer by following these steps:

Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Sound Recorder

It saves your voice as a .WAV-file, which you can convert to an MP3 or burn to an audio CD.

Travel Experience Log:

Students may fill out a Travel Experience Log to show how often they visited a Spanish-speaking place in order to read, write, listen, and/or speak within a spanish-speaking environment. Such places may include, but are not limited to: abroad experiences or local places such as businesses, factories, restaurants, stores, supermarkets, public libraries, civic centers, museums, etc. All places must be safe and appropriate for school. Visiting these places provides students the opportunity to learn new thematic vocabulary and grammatical structures within real-life contexts. Through these extracurricular studies, they may learn about culture, sociology, history, relationships, technology, theology, science, geography, commerce, climate, travel skills, or any other set of knowledge and skills useful in life, especially in Spanish-speaking areas. Students may want to gear their choices of Spanish-speaking sites toward any future careers of interest.

Games and Activities Practice:

Students may fill out a Games and Activities Log to show how often they played games, taught, or read in Spanish to a friend or younger sibling or younger cousin. You may use games that are published in Spanish. (See your local library!) You may also use games that are published in English, but you will use them in Spanish. Such games may include, but are not limited to: Candyland (practicing colors), Scrabble (practicing the spelling of basic Spanish words), Battleship (practicing letters and numbers), Yahtzee (practicing numbers), Uno (practicing basic numbers and colors), etc. Reading sources may include children's literature and should be age-appropriate for the youth. Such reading sources may include children's magazines, children's story books, children's non-fiction books, nursery rhymes, songs, children's Spanish web sites, etc. You may use flash cards that teach colors, shapes, numbers, simple math, etc. All resources must be appropriate for school. Visiting these resources provides students the opportunity to learn (and teach to younger siblings or cousins) basic vocabulary and an interest in the Spanish language and Hispanic culture. Through these extracurricular studies, they may learn about common children's themes such as culture, history, world (or Hispanic) cultures, folklore, relationships, technology, theology, science, geography, weather, travel skills, self-awareness, or any other set of knowledge and skills useful in life.