Spanish: Reflexive Style

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Schreiben: Morgenroutine

Chris here again with another German activity to share. Today we will take a look at a fun writing activity which can be expanded to include communication with fellow classmates.

This activity requires students to have knowledge of reflexive verbs and pronouns. The thematic topic is daily routines and hygiene.

You will need to create a chart for the days of the week and times of the day by the hour. It's a good idea to start at 7 or 8 am and end at a reasonable time in the evening. Provide students with a list of common daily hygiene activities such as sich anziehen (to get dressed), sich duschen (to shower), sich rasieren (to shave), and more. Have students fill in the chart for every day of the week and list when they do which activity for their hygiene and also count how often per week they do it e.g. einmal am Tag, alle zwei/drei Tage, einmal die Woche, nie, etc.

Next, have students write a brief description of their typical routine including as many of the reflexive phrases as possible.

Collect the students' writing and for the next class period create a list or bingo sheet of the most interesting responses from the students' writing. This will be an interview style bingo where students must ask their fellow classmates and practice the third person reflexive when they must find the student who best matches up with the various sentences on the bingo sheet.

Together, these activities should provide quite a bit of reflexive practice across different skills.

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Spanish: Reflexive Verb Rap

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German: Charades with Reflexive

Chris here again with a fun activity for your German classes. Charades is a fun game that pairs well with language teaching. I recently used this for a lesson on reflexive verbs and daily routine/hygiene vocabulary.

I gathered several pictures of the target phrases such as I wash myself / Ich wasche mich and then divided the class into two groups. One student from each group came up to the front of the class and was shown a picture featuring one of the daily routine tasks. Then each student modeled the activity for their group. The group members then had to guess the correct reflexive phrase. Once you cycle through the various tasks once you could go through a second time but have the students in the groups write the correct phrases on the board after each task is modeled. You can have a lot of fun with this activity by having guy students get tasks such as applying makeup to oneself - Ich schminke mich! Students tend to really get into the acting part of the activity so motivation and attention are high.

Grammar Activities: Reflexive Verbs and Pronouns

Hello all, Chris here with a fun activity for reflexive pronouns and verbs! While the activity will use German examples, this could easily be adapted to other languages. In German, use of the reflexive often involves speaking about our daily routines.

To start the activity I have students create a Wochenplan or weekly schedule with their courses and other information listed on them. For example:

Montag
9:00 Aufstehen
9:30 Duschen
10:00 Geschichte
12:00 Mittagessen
2:00 Sport
6:00 Kino mit Freunden

Each student will complete a full weekly schedule.You can also have students focus solely on daily hygiene using verbs such as sich waschen, sich duschen, sich buersten, sich kaemmen, sich baden and others. Organize the students into pairs. Each student will ask their partner about his/her schedule. Wann putzt du dir die Zaehne? (When do you brush your teeth?) Wann waescht du dir die Haende? (When do you wash your hands?) 

Another fun activity which works well as a review is to divide the class into two groups. The two groups will sit across from one another in a long line. Have each student write down 5 reflexive verbs and a reflexive pronoun on note cards. There should be one reflexive verb and one pronoun on each card, with 5 cards total. If you want to make the activity more advanced, students could also add a particular tense to their cards.

To start the activity, a student will choose one of their cards and show it to the student across from them. That student will then have to make a correct sentence using the information on the card. If the student answers correctly he/she will have won that card and may take it from their opponent. If they answer incorrectly, they must instead randomly give their opponent one of their cards. A student who loses all of their cards is eliminated from the game. All students who are eliminated must then write a short essay using 5 different reflexive verbs. Students can continue the game for about 10 minutes or so, or until there are only 2 students with cards remaining.

German: Reflexive Verbs Hot Potato

Hello all, Chris here. Today I would like to share a fast and fun activity you can use to help your students practice reflexive! As usual, I will leave the grammar explanation up to the individual teacher.

This activity is a group activity involving the entire class. Have the students form a large circle with no desks or chairs in the middle.

For the 'hot potato' you can use anything suitable such as a tennis ball or foam ball.

To start, a student will toss the ball to another student and name both a reflexive pronoun and a reflexive verb. The student who received the ball must then make a sentence from this. Upon successfully making a sentence the student is then free to choose the next student to toss the ball to and repeat the above process. Each round a new verb should be used. You can add some competition into the activity by eliminating anyone who is unable to make a correct sentence. After a few rounds you can add another layer to the activity by adding in the category of tenses for students to choose when picking the next student. Generally you just need to practice the present and the perfect tenses. After several more round of this you can add in the final category of sentence types, e.g. declarative and questions. As a final challenge I added negation as well.

The activity worked really well and the students managed to get a good amount of practice with the reflexive. 

Comments welcome!

Spanish: Reflexive Verbs

Hello everyone, Claudia here,


Today I have a fun video my good friend and colleague, Claudia Sadowski, wants to share with us. This video is a really nice way to get your Spanish students to practice and remember the uses of Spanish reflexive verbs. It also illustrates how you can integrate an activity such as having students make their own videos to your class. You should check back on a post I did some time ago on Spanish student videos for more ideas on this!