About this activity
Twelve prompts asking for a described scene in complete Spanish sentences: ¿Qué ves en el parque? Describe la cocina: ¿quién está y qué hace? Describe el salón de clases con tres detalles. Describe el mercado: colores, personas, objetos. ¿Cómo se siente el niño de la lámina y por qué? The prompts get progressively harder, ending on inference rather than description.
How to use it in a session
Require the complete sentence the prompt asks for. Un perro is an answer and hay un perro en el parque is the target, and the difference is the whole point of a board built to extend utterance length. Ask for three details where the prompt asks for three, and count them — a specific number gives the child something to aim at. The last prompt about how the child feels and why is the one to spend extra time on. Ten minutes covers three or four scenes.
What to listen for
Listen for utterance length growing across the session rather than accuracy on any one sentence. Watch for a student who lists nouns without verbs, which is common and is what the complete-sentence requirement addresses. The feelings prompt separates description from inference: a student who describes the scene accurately and cannot say why the child feels that way has the vocabulary and not the reasoning.
Carrying it home
Any photograph on a phone works for this. Asking a child to describe what is happening in a picture, in full sentences, takes a minute and can happen anywhere.
Questions
- Is this board in Spanish?
- Yes, the prompts are Spanish throughout. This page is in English so an English-speaking clinician can find and evaluate it.
- Do I need an account?
- No, it plays free in the browser.
- What grades is it for?
- First through fourth, working on expressive language and utterance length in Spanish.