Date: May 18, 2003

Grade Level: 4, 5, 6

Subject(s):

• Foreign Language/Spanish
• Mathematics/Measurement

Duration: Two 30-minute sessions

Description: Students will learn how to state the time of day in Spanish, learning kinesthetically.

Goals: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) :
( http://www.actfl.org/public/articles/execsumm.pdf )

• Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.
• Standard 3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures.
• Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.

Materials:

• large board and writing instrument (blackboard and chalk)
• space for students to stand in a line and wave their arms about without hitting anything
• pencils/pens and notebook paper
• teacher-created worksheets (described in the Assessment section)

Procedure:
After drawing a big circle (clock) on the board, write hours around the outside (doce, una, dos, etc.) and minutes around the inside (cinco, diez, cuarto, veinte, veinticinco, media ... down the right, and cinco, diez, cuarto, veinte, veinticinco ... down the left.). Write the RT real big for cuarto , and the TR real big for cuatro . [ Author's Note: You might want to pass around a few quarters and emphasized the RT in English "quarter" comparing the quarter dollar with the quarter hour. My students already knew "cuatro."] Also, when I divide the clock in half, I draw a line down the middle and then bend around the bottom so that "media" (seis) is obviously included in the "Y" half instead of the "menos" half. Emphasize the EI for seis, and the IE for siete and diez. [Students already knew their numbers in theory, but this helped work on the spelling.] Say the number "say-ees" getting faster and "see-ay-tay", etc., reviewing the five vowel sounds they've been going over. Compare "tres" to "seis" and how they sound different.

Line up the students; have them face the board. Stand at the front, facing the students. Do not block the clock on the board. Put your left arm up and have the students put their right arms up, sweeping downwards saying, "Y"! [ Author's Note: I drew Y down the right side of the inside of the circle holding the chalk sideways for thick letters.] Then do the same with your right arm up and their left arms up saying, "Menos!" Do this together a few times. Then students call out the correct word while you wave your left then right arm up and down in different patterns/rhythms, trying to trip them up when it gets too easy!

Now start at the top with one arm up and come down the "Y" side saying, "Y cinco, Y diez, Y cuarto;" then with the other arm at the top working your way down the MENOS side saying, "menos cinco, menos diez, menos cuarto." After doing that a few times, come up the menos side with "menos veinticinco," "menos veinte" and then down the "Y" side with that arm saying, "Y veinte, Y veinticinco, and Y media." Finally, go around the whole hour from "menos veinticinco" all the way to "y media" (switching arms at the top), and then since we start adding in the hour, we switch to the next hour at the bottom. [ Author's Note: I had never thought of it this way before, but a fourth grader had a great way of putting it: "In English we do the hour from the 12 to the 12, but in Spanish they go from the 6 to the 6." This was very insightful, and she was right! In English we usually count 1:00, 1:05...1:55, and then change for 2:00. In Spanish we go 1-25, 1-20, 1-1/4, 1-10...1+20, 1+25, 1+1/2, and then change to 2! P.S., for the hour, at the top of the clock along the inside where I was writing the minutes, since there are no minutes spoken at the 12, I wrote "Es la" and underneath it, "Son las." These kids learned the essentials of time-telling in two classes, whereas some of my junior and high school students are still struggling with it.]

Assessment:

[ Author's Note: In the previous class we worked on stating the hour, using worksheets to fill in the blanks first with the number, then with the verbs (ES vs. SON), then with the articles (LA vs. LAS). After each fill in the blank sentence was corrected, students wrote out the whole sentence next to it. Then for homework they had nine clock faces with the times where they had to round off to the nearest hour and just write the sentence for the nearest hour. I let them round up or down when they got to the half hour, since they were used to rounding up in math class. Some sample items are shown below.]

For this lesson, teachers can create a worksheet as follows: for one section, students correctly match ten times on the left (showing clock faces AND numeric times) with the correct 3-word sentences on the right. For another section, students identify the 4th and 5th words for the five-minute increments, or indicate "punto" for the period if it is an exact hour.

Sample Assessment Items:

PAGE ONE

1:00     Es la _______.         ____________________________.

2:00     Son las  _______.     ____________________________.

3:00     Son las ________.   _____________________________.

Etc.

PAGE TWO

1:00  ____  la una.  ____________________________.

2:00  ____ las dos.   ____________________________.

3:00  ____ las tres.  ____________________________.

1:00  _____ la una.  ____________________________.

4:00  _____ las cuatro.  ____________________________.

Etc.

PAGE THREE

1:00  Es  _____  una.  ____________________________.

2:00  Son _____ dos.  ____________________________.

3:00  Son  _____ tres.  ____________________________.

1:00  Es  ______ una.  ____________________________.

4:00  Son  ______ cuatro.  ____________________________.

Etc.

HOMEWORK:  Clock faces showing the hours. Students fill in the hour rounded off.

Examples:

Clock face showing 1:15, answer round off to 1:00.

Clock face showing 2:35, answer rounds off to 3:00.

Clock face showing 5:00, answer rounds off to 5:00.

Clock face showing 9:45, answer rounds off to 10:00.

Then later, including the half hour, which is different from rounding up in math class.

Clock face showing 11:30, in Spanish time-telling rounds down to 11:00.

Clock face showing 12:30 rounds down to 12:00.