I have been having my Spanish students take real life pictures of vocabulary items that are in our textbook and put the pictures in my class Flickr account. The textbook’s drawings lack realism (what is that?). Most students used their Smartphones. When students can see a real object such as a plate, they can better learn the word.
Elementary teachers, special education teachers, modern language/foreign language teachers, ESL teachers, and people working with refugees can use these pictures. The pictures usually have no words. They can be used in any language.
There are about 500 pictures; some categories, such as comida (food) are very large with subcategories, while others have about ten pictures. I will update this blog as the students add more categories.
To use these free pictures in your class 1) go to flickr.com, 2) click on the word Search, 3) Click on Tags Only at the far right, 4) In the Photos search box, type in spancon + one of the following category names such as spancon +hora (for clocks showing various times).
To show the pictures in a slideshow, 1) click on the slideshow icon (a screen) in the upper right, 2) Click on Options in the upper right, 3) Adjust the time from slow to medium to fast; slow is about seven seconds between slides and 4) click on the X in the upper right corner to close the Option window. When the left bottom side displays a triangle, the slide show is paused. Click on the triangle and two bars appear, the slideshow is running. The first slide will not change for a few seconds since it is on a time delay; just wait. Students can identify the vocabulary and even say very short sentences before the slide changes.
The category names are in Spanish (without accent marks)
actividad (common actions)
casa (house)
clase (classroom objects)
clima (weather)
color (color)
comida (food) with subcategories of fruta (fruit) , verduras (vegetables), bebida (drink)
cuerpo (body)
deporte (sports)
hora (the time)
naturaleza (nature)
numero (numbers
occupacion (occupation, jobs)
ropa (clothing)
quehaceres (household chores)
My Spanish spontaneous speaking activities are at Teacherspayteachers: http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle
My formative assessment books, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students ; Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment ; and Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment , can be purchased at http://is.gd/tbook
Harry Grover Tuttle teaches English and Spanish college courses atOnondaga Community College. He is also the author of several books on formative assessment.
