Charlene G. Blair
cblair@shadyside.org

I have made an activity that I can use with the first chapter of Ven Conmigo 3 to review previously learned vocabulary, reinforce new vocabulary and incorporate the processes involved in traveling.. There is a series of six situations pertaining to traveling from Pittsburgh to Galicia, Spain, via Madrid. With a clip art cues to make the questions more interesting, the students will answer questions or provide the information requested. Additionally, I have included two Web sights to visit for information needed to complete the homework.

This activity would be available on the computer to a class of level 3 Spanish students and probably used as a homework assignment to be turned in within 2 days of being assigned. We would have studied new vocabulary pertaining to Galicia and La Coruña, particularly the aquatic sports so popular in the region. . Students would simply log onto the Language Department Intranet sight and then onto my page. The student has to read and understand the instructions and then each situation and write complete sentence responses to the prompts of the situation or to the particular questions asked. I began by thinking of the text, which offers CD-ROM activities, and how I could augment those activities. I have not used the CD-ROM package because of limitations of one computer in my classroom. The opportunity to do class activities in our new language lab is exciting. Additionally, students can work independently as schedules permit. With my project activity on the Intranet, they could access it not only on campus, but also from home and complete the assignment without much difficulty. Placement on the Intranet would eliminate the issue of permission to use the Internet (and providing an alternative activity for those students who lacked parental permission to use the Net).

An anticipatory activity would be to use the Ven Conmigo CD-ROM or another Web sight (the name of which is in files at school L ) to familiarize students with the geography and points of interest in Galicia. A follow-up activity could be to create a Power Point presentation using the graphics I have included in the project as prompts for the students to create a spontaneous dialog.

I would like to work on expanding this to include audio selections of both castellano and gallego. There are many other ways this could be expanded as my expertise and time allow. A difficulty I encountered was as simple as file management. The computer I most frequently use is woefully out of date and about to be replaced; another is Windows 95 and the third is Windows 98. Much information was presented in this workshop and I hope that poco a poco I can improve my skills.