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French and Spanish Vocabulary Magic Squares (Digital, Google Slides™)

When French and Spanish teachers tell me what they want in resources there are a few common themes:

Digital files that I can easily share with students
Little to no prep
Self-grading so that students can track their progress
Easy to grade
Provides students with effective practice with vocabulary themes without translation.

Digital magic squares activities using Google Slides™ touch on all of these points.

The right side of each screen has 16 pictures and the grid has the words that correspond to each picture. Students type the number of the picture below the word.

When all numbers are filled in students can verify their answers. The total of the numbers in each row, column, and diagonal is 34.

There are 4 puzzles in this activity, an answer slide and a vocabulary reference page.

Absolutely no prep needed. Just share with students. Useful for distance, hybrid, blended or in school learning and teaching.

Digital files, Little to no prep, Self-grading, Easy to grade, Effective practice

Get you magic squares activities now and share immediately with students.

French Digital Magic Squares Topics:

Spanish Digital Magic Squares Topics:

Digital Tool to Support Foreign Language Sentence Creation

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Students at the novice proficiency level typically speak and write in memorized chunks of language and phrases that they learn by memory. As they progress in proficiency teachers can support their attempts at creating language on their own. It is useful to guide them in finding their own ways to add on to the target language that they produce. I find that one effective way of doing this is to begin by focusing on verbs that they know well and give them opportunities to use them in context. First with various subjects and then by adding on to the verb phrases in ways that shows their understanding of the meaning of the verb.

This activity is called Hidden Forms (Formes Cachées in French and Formas Escondidas in Spanish). It is useful to use in PACE lesson as students engage in extension using the verb forms and structures that were introduced. There is an added element of fun and strategy as students search for the correct verb forms in the grid. Not necessarily the most communicative part of the activity, but I always think that students enjoy these small amusing elements and it has the added benefit of being done in the target language.

These Hidden Forms activities are all done in Google Slides and can be easily shared with students through platforms such as Google Classroom. They work well whether as an in-class activity, homework or when doing distance or hybrid/blended learning and teaching.

First slide: There is a subject pronoun and an infinitive. Students write the correct verb form.

Second Slide: There is a grid with subject pronouns, infinitives and verb forms. Students find the subject, infinitive and verb form together from the first slide. They then highlight the boxes and “color in” the boxes with the fill color tool.