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Hola

1. Hola Greetings To introduce children to their first Spanish words, we start with three basic greetings, “hola”, “buenos días” and “buenas noches.”

From the very beginning, this course sets out to give pupils the satisfaction of using the new language for real and purposeful communication.

You can also develop a surprising number of enjoyable activities from this tiny initial vocabulary.

Watching the video sequences will help pupils see when these greetings might be used. As a first glimpse of Spain, it will prompt comparisons with your own community.

VIDEO section 1

Scene from video section 1: “Hola.”

Children greet the viewers: “Hola.”

The Headteacher greets pupils as they enter the school playground: “Hola, buenos días.”

In the streets of Calahorra, adults and children greet viewers: “Hola” and “buenos días.”

The check-out assistant in the supermarket greets customers: “Hola, buenos días.”

Stallholders in the street market greet their customers: “Hola, buenos días.”

ANIMATION : In the hills above the town, a friendly dinosaur greets the children: “Hola.”

Darkness falls over Calahorra. People greet each other in the streets: “Hola, buenas noches.”

People say good evening to the viewers: “Buenas noches.”

SONG: verse 1 - “Hola, hola, buenos días.” verse 2 - “Hola, hola, buenas noches.”

NEW WORDS AND PHRASES

hola buenos días buenas noches

- hello - good morning - good evening

HOW SPANISH WORKS “Hola” is an informal greeting used all the time by both Spanish children and adults. Children are less likely to say “buenos días” and “buenas noches” to each other, but any child visiting Spain will hear adults using them on a regular basis, often in conjunction with “hola”, e.g. “hola, buenos días” and “hola, buenas noches.” There are examples in the video.

Scene from video section 1: “Buenos días.”

Scene from video section 1: “Hola.”

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Hola ❑ Echoing: move round the room to greet individuals with “hola.” Pupils echo your greeting back.

When to introduce the written word

The introductory chapter outlines the principle of this course, that pupils should be familiar with the sound of the word before seeing it written. At the end of the video section, each of the Spanish greetings is repeated, with the written word superimposed over the pictures.

You may choose to omit this part when pupils watch the video for the first time. You can show it at a later date when they have had plenty of opportunities to hear and use the greetings.

They will then be ready to try and build up connections between the written word and pronunciation.

❑ Echoing: continue moving round the room, vary your greetings to include “buenos días” as well as “hola.” Pupils echo your greeting back. ❑ Now ask pupils to move around the room greeting each other by saying “hola” and “hola, buenos días.”

KEY SOUNDS

hola introduction to the Spanish silent “h” (The name of the Spanish town in the video, Calahorra, is another example)

Activities As this is the very first Spanish lesson, you could start by exploring what pupils think they already know about Spain. A section in the introduction offers other ideas for “getting started”.

After watching the video, the children will want to practise the language while the sounds are fresh in their minds.

Later, perhaps in another session, you could encourage them to talk about how they greet people, and make comparisons with what they have seen happen in Spain.

❑ Greetings game 1 The children form a circle round you. Throw a soft ball to different children as you greet them.

As they reply to the greeting, the children throw the ball back to you. Pupils can then take turns to be the person throwing the ball from the centre of the circle. ❑ Greetings game 2 As you throw the ball, change the pace at which you speak and the intonation of your voice. For example, try whispering “hola” for the duration of several throws; then speak louder and speed up the pace between throws; finally call out “hola” as if you had just bumped into someone you had not seen for a long time. Pupils echo your intonation.

❑ Set the scene for your first look at Spain (see Introduction: "getting started".) ❑ Watch video section 1: “Hola.” ❑ Echoing: greet pupils with “hola”; they echo “hola.”

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Hola each pupil stands up and promptly sits down again as the next person stands up.

If the children normally sit in groups, the “wave” can take place round each of the class tables. See which table finishes first.

Cultural awareness ❑ When everyone has had the opportunity to practise a little of the new language, it is a good time to introduce this chapter‘s first “talking point” - about the ways people greet each other.

We suggest you encourage children to talk about how they greet people, and what they observe others doing in their community.

You may want to view the video again, this time asking children to look at the ways Spanish people greet each other.

❑ Pupils can colour the flashcards and stick the speech bubbles to the pictures. These can be displayed in the classroom.

It is worth ensuring that the children do not spend too long colouring their pictures especially if you have limited time allocated for language activities. You might suggest that they take them home to colour.

❑ Musical greetings Pupils form two circles. The outer circle moves clockwise, the inner circle moves anticlockwise.

You could play any authentic Spanish music or one of the tunes from the “Tú y yo” video. When the music stops, pupils greet the person facing them “hola” or “hola, buenos días”. ❑ Flashcards Introduce pupils to the greeting “buenas noches” by using the greetings flashcards. Alternatively, you could make transparencies for the OHP. Point to the different pictures and say the appropriate greeting. Pupils echo the greeting.

Do this plenty of times varying the order in which you point to the pictures. If pupils are confident, try and find ways to catch them out and make this exercise into a game.

❑ Show video section 1: “Hola” again for reinforcement. If you give pupils the chance to see the video several times, this increases their exposure to native speakers, and helps them find out how much their understanding has increased since first viewing.

CROSS CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

❑ Classroom routines: Use “hola, buenos días” every morning when you greet your class at the beginning of the day.

❑ Ask confident pupils to point to the different pictures. The class calls out the appropriate greeting and the pupil pointing to the picture replies with the same greeting.

❑ Classroom routines: Use “hola” whenever you meet pupils around the school.

You could also encourage the school secretary, the caretaker and other colleagues to take part.

❑ Do a “Mexican wave” using “buenos días” and “buenas noches”. Pupils form a circle with their chairs. The first pupil says “buenos días”, the second pupil says “buenas noches” and so on.

This continues round the circle. As they speak,

❑ Art: Pupils can paint their own pictures representing “hola”, “buenos días” and “buenas noches”.

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❑ Music: When children are first beginning to learn a foreign language it is often a good idea to sing new vocabulary to simple tunes. Pupils can sing the song from the video “Hola, hola, buenos días.”

EXTRA WORDS AND PHRASES

buenas tardes - good afternoon/ good evening bien - good

❑ Music: Pupils can use percussion instruments to make up chants based on the rhythm of the words. You could also ask them to compose their own tunes to fit the rhythm of the words.

If pupils become used to singing in Spanish, they will find it easy later on to progress to authentic Spanish songs.

If you are confident with your Spanish, you may like to introduce pupils to a small amount of additional vocabulary.

“Buenas tardes” is a greeting you and pupils can use in the afternoon and early evening. ❑ You could say “buenas tardes” when pupils return to the classroom after lunch break. ❑ You could also add “buenas tardes” to the “Mexican wave”.

CLASSROOM INTERACTION

You can use “bien” to praise a pupil, or to say they are correct. Chapter 16 has suggestions of more classroom management vocabulary for teachers and how you might introduce it.

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Hola

Talking point EVERYDAY LIFE IN SPAIN Meeting people As part of your class work with this section, you can look at how we meet and greet people in different cultures.

Before pupils watch the first video section again, it is a good idea to prepare them by encouraging them to talk about similar situations in their own lives and in your community.

Friends and family kiss each other on both cheeks.

...in your community Men will often shake hands with each other - this includes close friends who meet on a regular basis as well as people meeting for the first time in more formal situations.

Teenagers will usually greet each other in a similar way. Younger children do not normally shake hands or kiss when they meet each other, but they will be quite used to doing this in family situations.

The prior discussion of their own social customs will help children better appreciate the nuances of other people’s ways.

Turning their attention to Spain, discuss what situations and places people are in when they say “hola”, “buenos días” and “buenas noches.”

What physical gestures do they make?

Look at how children greet each other.

What happens when children meet adults, and when adults meet others in various circumstances?

Ask children to talk about: How do they greet their friends every day?

How would they greet a new child they had never met before?

What about when they meet parents, or elderly relatives?

What would be the reaction if they greeted the headteacher in the same way as one of their friends?

What do they observe when adults greet each other?

In a multi-cultural community there will be more to talk about. Some children may use one language to greet their parents or elderly relatives, another for their friends.

Exploring these ideas will help bring out that greetings are not just words. What you say and do when you meet someone is all about who you are, who they are, and the relationship between you. We are all influenced by what is expected as polite or proper, “cool” or fashionable - in other words, by social customs and manners.

Cultural awareness

...in Spain

❑ You could ask the class to make a diary of all the greetings and any physical gestures they use themselves in one day, as well as those they see others use. The survey could include television programmes. The following day, you could discuss all the greetings you have recorded.

If you now look at the video, the class will be ready to look at what Spanish people do.

The video shows a variety of people greeting each other in different contexts.

In Spain the practice of kissing friends and family on both cheeks is very common.

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Talking point DINOSAURS IN SPAIN Children are often keen to collect information about dinosaurs. They probably know that the many different species of dinosaur used to live all over the world, including the part of Europe that millions of years later has become Spain.

Children will probably have seen dinosaur fossil bones in museums. These are the main source of evidence that these creatures existed, and about how they lived.

Near Calahorra in the Rioja region is another kind of evidence: about 500 fossilised dinosaur footprints, Europe's largest concentration.

Life-size model dinosaur La Rioja’s dinosaur footprints have become a major attraction.

Tourists from all over the world come to visit the different sites along the “Dinosaur Trail” (ruta de los dinosaurios).

How were the fossil footprints formed?

What can we learn from the dinosaur footprints?

As the animals walked along the muddy terrain, they left behind a trail. Most of the footprints disappeared when it rained, or as the marsh water washed over them. Others dried out and hardened, then cracked to dust in the sun and were blown away. Occasionally one was covered by floodwater while it was still intact, and swiftly buried in muddy sediment.

Over millions of years, tons more sediments piled up over the footprint. Pressure hardened soft mud or sand into layers of rock - leaving the footprint as a dent in the top of one layer.

As time went by, wind, rain and frosts eroded the covering rocks, until the layer containing the prints was again uncovered.

Dinosaur tracks help scientists find out more about dinosaur anatomy and behaviour.

By measuring the shape, size and depth of each print, they can calculate roughly the size of the animal and how it was moving.

When they find tracks of several prints left by one animal this gives more clues: e.g. whether the dinosaur was walking or running; on two legs, or on all fours. The length of stride shows how long its legs were.

Activities ❑ Your local museum may have a loan collection of fossils (not necessarily of dinosaurs) that you could borrow for children to handle. ❑ If your school has a sandpit, you could devise a science activity making footprints in wet sand, then trying to draw conclusions using the print as the only clue.

Two children could make a trail; others could then try to guess what they were wearing on their feet; how they were moving, e.g. running, hopping; how tall they were, etc.

A dinosaur’s footprint - this one is 30-50cm long, with a stride between prints of 1.5 metres.

In the Middle Ages, people told stories about the prints being the hoofmarks of Santiago's horse, or left by giant chickens that lived in the time of the Moors.

For more about the dinosaur trail, see section 6: “Los números 1 - 12”

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This page may be photocopied for classroom use.

Early Start Spanish “Tú y yo”

This page may be photocopied for classroom use.

Early Start Spanish “Tú y yo”

Hola, buenos días

Hola, buenas noches

Hola

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Hola

Hola, buenas noches

This page may be photocopied for classroom use.

Early Start Spanish “Tú y yo”