Attached is a booklet I have made to help my students revise for the GCSE Spanish role play. It is for Foundation Level as this is what I am currently teaching to two groups. All of our students do a GCSE MFL and in these late stages we have settled on who should do Foundation. To help them, I have tried to break things down into chunks for them to learn the key vocabulary with Quizlet links to support – they seem to find these useful. There is a set of past paper role plays in the second half of the booklet. In practical terms, I have copied the booklet on A5 size to make it a bit more portable. I would be interested to hear any feedback on what people do to prepare students for the role play, in particular.

I have updated the vocabulary booklet to include some morphology exercises at the beginning e.g. suffixes like -ante, -dor, etc. There are Quizlets for all of the vocabulary which can be found in the following Padlet – https://padlet.com/njones38211/spanish-gcse-revision-2023-ei3dt5dpk5o0p9ph

Attached are booklets based on the AQA reading and listening exams. Using past paper questions grouped together, the aim is to get the students to focus on some of the techniques needed.

Attached is a booklet I have put together guiding students through the requirements for the GCSE Higher Writing paper. It has been updated to take into account the advance information on the Spanish exam i.e. no topic of free time for the 90 and 150 word tasks at Higher Level. There have also been some further additions – idioms and in the translation section. I have not updated all of the 90 word tasks i.e. I have not removed the topic of free time, as I have mixed tier groups and the Foundation students will still need to cover free time. (I am confused by this, but perhaps I am missing the point – if anyone can help, please let me know). In the booklet I start with the 150 word task with the reasoning that if they can do this, the 90 word task will be easy! Let’s see.

UPDATED VERSION POSTED 19.2.22 – This is version 3. I keep on adding to it! The PDF download will incorporate some of the fonts which may not appear on all computers. Use the Word version if you want to edit the booklet yourself.

QUIZLET LINK: https://quizlet.com/gb/661978767/key-phrases-for-higher-level-writing-aqa-gcse-spanish-flash-cards/

I have put two reading comprehension booklets together based on similar types of questions that have been appearing in the AQA GCSE exams. Skills are the key focus of the booklets, but it is good for students to experience different forms of questioning used in the exams. I have been working on a PowerPoint to accompany the Foundation version as I only have Foundation groups this year. This is saved in the same area below, but it is very much work in progress and will improve as I work through. Please note that all of the exercises in the booklets are taken from past papers and could include material you may could be using for assessments. You would need to remove those sections. Beware!

READING BOOKLETS: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pOn6dFPXdQbpKQN5nANqcdc8cVRZUlng?usp=sharing

I’m not normally one for promoting companies via my blog, but ….. A few months ago we had a theatre group come in to perform to our Year 10. It was great! We will have them in again. However, what is even greater (!) is their venture into making films for language learning. Years ago we used to have some great things produced by the BBC and Channel 4 for leaning Spanish (Aventura vascas, etc.), but they have all disappeared. Now the same company that does the theatre productions is making films which I think are great. Their website is www.onattifilms.com. We are about to take out a subscription + plan to embed some of the resources into our schemes of learning. 

 

As I explained in a post a week or two ago, we are trying to prepare our Year 11 students for their A level studies from September. We are putting together transition packs, but are doing this in two phases. Attached is the work I have created for phase 2. I really want to get the balance right between engaging them to do some work and pushing them beyond GCSE while at the same time not putting anyone off taking the subject! Not sure whether I’ve managed it here, but you can adapt it yourselves to your own context. Students work through the three tasks independently.

TASK 1 – Sentence structure /grammatical accuracy (using Duolingo). The activities are quick to do + focus them on a range of grammar and sentence structure exercises.

TASK 2 – Cultural awareness (- exposure to Spanish language music and culture). The Bomba Estero song “Soy yo” has a great video and message.

TASK 3 – Vocabulary development + conceptual awareness (- the how and why of things). Hopefully this gets them to engage with authentic texts but in a gradual, step by step way.

BOOKLET: Step Up – SPANISH A LEVEL 2 v2

The attached are vocabulary learning homework tasks for Year 11 Spanish. Each list is taken from EdExcel /AQA past paper GCSE higher level papers (reading + listening). The students are tested on their learning of the lists by completing the relevant reading / listening task. As we are at this time of year focusing on the exam and practising the skills needed, this approach allows vocabulary learning to avoid being too topic focused. As the students do more of these, they start to see that some of the language keeps reoccurring. If you spot any typos, please let me know!

RESOURCES:

READING ASSESSMENT 1 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

READING ASSESSMENT 1 taken from Edexcel 2019

READING ASSESSMENT 2 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

READING ASSESSMENT 2 taken from Edexcel 2019

READING ASSESSMENT 3 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

READING ASSESSMENT 3 taken from Edexcel 2019

READING ASSESSMENT 4 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

READING ASSESSMENT 4 taken from Edexcel 2019

READING ASSESSMENT 5 taken from Edexcel 2018

READING ASSESSMENT 5 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

READING ASSESSMENT 6 taken from Edexcel 2018

READING ASSESSMENT 6 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 1 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 1 taken from Edexcel 2019

LISTENING MICRO ASSESSEMENT 1 taken from EdExcel Higher 2019

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 2 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 2 taken from Edexcel 2019

LISTENING MICRO ASSESSEMENT 2 taken from EdExcel Higher 2019

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 3 taken from Edexcel 2019 VOCABULARY

LISTENING ASSESSMENT 3 taken from Edexcel 2019

LISTENING MICRO ASSESSEMENT 3 taken from EdExcel Higher 2019

 

In line with my earlier post on GCSE listening skills for the AQA examination, I am posting examples of question types for the reading exam. Popular questions types are “question and answer” where you need to understand the question being asked as well as the response – these usually take the form of questions based on a questionnaire; Present/Past/Future identification; and gap fill where grammatical awareness as well as vocabulary knowledge are key. In line with the listening exam, students need to be aware of distractors, synonyms, word families and negatives as well as skills such as inference and understanding that the answer may not be a word in the text.

RESOURCE: SKILLS types of READING questions