Students in Spanish I will need to learn the possessive adjectives early on in the semester. The activity presented in this article gives your students the opportunity to practice these words while forming a conversation with another person in class.
Once Spanish I students have learned a variety of different nouns it is time to teach possessive adjectives. A great time to teach these is when you are covering the different family member names. Combing these two areas of Spanish vocabulary provides an excellent opportunity for students to get some much needed conversation practice. The activity below does just that.
When class starts, review the different family member nouns in Spanish. Ask students who their uncle is or how many cousins they have. Make sure that your students answer in complete sentences. Now present the possessive adjectives in Spanish. Give examples orally and on the board. Do an exercise or two in the book and then break the class up into groups of twos.
Tell the students that, in their groups, they are to come up with a conversation between two kids who are bragging about their family. On the board list all of the possessive adjectives and the family member nouns. Instruct the students to use each possessive adjective, plural and singular, and also to use at least six of the family member names. You can start your students off with a couple of lines from an example that you come up with. The first kid could say, “Mi tío Juan es muy fuerte.” The other kid responds by saying something like “Pues, todos mis tíos son fuertes. Tu tío no es tan fuerte como los míos.” This short example helps students see the direction that their conversations should be going in. Have them jot their conversations down.
After about ten minutes have the different groups read their conversations out loud to the rest of the class. As students are speaking write the different examples of possessive adjectives combined with family member nouns that you hear on the board. Ask the class why, for example, “nuestros” was used instead of “nuestra”. Try to pick one example from each group.
Students will have fun with this exercise. You can add other vocabulary requirements if you feel like your students can handle it. The total activity should take about twenty minutes.
