GAMES AND ACTIVITIES to get 'em CONJUGATING and become Spanish conjugating pros!

Last year when one of my students said to me Señora Bair, "I actually REALLY enjoy conjugating", was one of those proud and triumphal moments as a teacher and made me wan't to cry lágrimas of joy!!!!!

I'm always telling my Level 1 Spanish students, "You ABSOLUTELY MUST be able to conjugate verbs if you want to be a successful Spanish reader, writer, speaker, or listener!"...and then I get that weird look once I say that word, "CONJUGATE". Once a student understands that "conjugating" means "changing" a verb to make sense for the subject pronoun being mentioned, much of the time it often "clicks" and for many students it can be hard, but if a good process is established, along with some practice, they will become GREAT conjugators and start to ENJOY IT.

Most educators have had an experience or two where they saw that the activity they had planned or the lesson they prepared was a complete success (WOO HOO!). I decided that rather than just "blab their heads off" that I would create something that would have been useful to ME when it was my first time being introduced to "verb conjugating" and voila, I created THIS:

"Señora Bair's Guide to Spanish Regular Verbs"

This guide was SUUUUUUUUUPER helpful because it is "to the point", but provides the steps broken down visually for them and gives them a chance to practice it with the steps hand in hand. I am happy to say that each time I have taken this approach they have ROCKED their conjugation tests!!!! (Scoooore!!!)

Also...

SUPER FUN GAME I use in my classroom to trick them into practicing and learning these verbs:

"Carrerra de Verbos"
 1. Set up students teams that consist of ROWS that go from the FRONT of the room to the BACK of the room (Preferably in groups of 5) facing the whiteboard.

2. Students will each need something to write with and a couple of lined pieces of paper per group.

3. The paper begins at the desk of the person seated in the BACK of the row. (I figured this out long ago that it works better safety wise and logistically to have the person seated in front of team run up).

4. Teacher shouts a VERB and the student in the BACK seat will be responsible for the "Yo" conjugation. Once that person has written the YO conjugation, they pass it to the person in front of them who is responsible for the "Tú" conjugation, and it goes on and on up until the front person in their row conjugates the "ellos/ellas/ustedes" conjugation. That person will run up to the board and write what their team got EXACTLY as it appears on the paper. Once they finish writing it on the board, they must cap their pen, turn around facing the teacher, and place their hands at their sides to lock in their answer. Teacher checks both board and paper to make sure they were both consistent. If it is correct, that team gets a point. If it is incorrect, teacher will check another team's board and award the point to that team if their's is correct! (I usually award the winning team with "pesos", but if you don't do fake money in your classroom you could do candy).

5. Be sure for each round (verb) that they switch spots within their team, so they get a chance to practice conjugating verbs for different pronouns given.