Model Answer Unit 4, Activity 6 D, Application and Reflection
This is a model answer. Your reflective account might be different.
Yesterday, my colleague and I, held our fourth Spanish lesson with our residents. This was once again in a small group format. Our lesson was planned to refresh previous words learned and then to introduce body parts in Spanish. We could not use Our Story app as we were not cleared for photographic use for this with residents yet but our props were a picture of a flamenco dancer with numbers pointing to different body parts and a smart phone to use for photographic discussions, pronunciations and music playing.
Interestingly, at the start of every lesson our learners tell us they cannot remember words they have previously learned but with gentle encouragement they recall them all!
We started the lesson by reciting the body parts chosen and writing them on our white board. We then asked residents to recall previous lessons by saying how many arms, fingers etc, they have - but in Spanish.
Our next learning task was a quiz. Everyone was given a picture of a flamenco dancer and asked to match the words written in Spanish to the body part numbered. Residents were good at helping each other and we helped with visual and pictorial aids. An example of this was when we said to remember an arm, brazo, they should think of scrubbing something clean using their arm with brasso! As an added reminder to lessons gone by, we put a question at the bottom of the sheet asking what colour the dancers dress was.
This led us to use the phone to bring up pictures of flamenco dancers and discuss their body parts and dress colours. It also brought forth memories of visits to Spain and seeing dancers.
We next had a game, Simon dice, or Simon Sat's. We asked learners to point to the body part shouted out. This got residents moving and warmed up for our final exercise which was using the phone to play a video of the Maxarena and encouraging residents to use their body parts to join in! We asked them at the end which body parts, in Spanish, they used.
I think in the next lesson, we could make use of another phone as we had to have a member of staff jump around everyone. We do have some tablets but the WiFi isn't great in the room we were using.
Using games and smartphones has proved of high value in all lessons. Last week we had a lesson on colours and after a chance comment about verde being the colour of the wicked witch's face in the Wizard of Oz, we ended up using the phone to translate it into Spanish and play clips of the movie to identify what other colours were present. I will never forget one lady, who has moderate dementia, turning to look at the board and laughing. When asked why, she said it was funny how the tin man is gris and that is just what he needed, some grease! A magical moment.
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