One of the silver linings of our unexpected extended work-from-home situation has been more time to read and tackle some lingering projects. One of those projects was to develop some sentence builders as inspired by Gianfranco Conti. Not only do they help to bridge from input to output for students, they also can be very helpful in bridging gaps created by our sudden change in teaching and learning during the pandemic.
I’m still learning how to maximize this technique, but thought I’d share some of what I’ve developed so far. I’d love to have your feedback!
For level 1: family, pets, & tener
For level 2: entertainment: movies & tv
Aventuras Nuevas 
Wow, these are amazing! As we’re coming into a year of virtual teaching and needing to redesign so much of how we teach, these are an incredible resource that are so versatile. Thank you y gracias!
Thank you for your encouragement 🙂
Very impressive! Thanks for sharing.
I love these activities for my Spanish 2 students. What a fabulous resource.
Great resources! Thanks for sharing! I also enjoy Gianfranco’s blog and what he shares, so I like seeing how others are implementing some of his ideas. One question I have is how to use the Sentence Builder segment. Is that a resource that helps them do the activities in general or is there a specific activity that they do with that page of the material?
Thank you! I weave them into our unit and we go step by step through them as we work our way through the lessons.
Is there a digital copy of Gainfranco’s book? I have hard copies but they are hard to adapt to our new remote reality
Not that I know of. Some typing and page design will be involved. One thing I have done with several of the exercises is to adapt them to PearDeck, GoFormative, & Kami to be able to use them in remote class.
I really like the idea of the sentence builders to take students from input to output. Thanks for sharing! At the risk of seeming, I don’t know, unappreciative I guess, I’d like to pose the following question: Do you think that doing so many activities around a limited amount of input is really productive? My instincts tell me that it might be better to continue with more input or to get them interacting more directly with me or with other students. Again, thanks for sharing the resources, and I’m intrigued by your lessons combining CI principles with Conti’s ideas. I’ll definitely be exploring your blog!
Thank you for reading & commenting. I think it’s important to consider this as one tool among many that are employed through the units. I do believe that the repetition is critical, but we do many things in class that aren’t represented in these documents that extend the content even further.
These resources are great. I love using sentence builders and I am just at the beginning of the learning curve, but what I am using in class is working.