About this activity
Fourteen Spanish words from the classroom: lápiz, pizarrón, mochila, maestra, recreo, cuaderno, libro, tijeras, goma, salón, pupitre, regla, biblioteca, tarea. For a bilingual student in an English-medium classroom, this is often the vocabulary that goes missing — the objects are all around them and named in the other language.
How to use it in a session
Ask for both languages where the student has them. A child who knows pencil and not lápiz has a Spanish vocabulary gap in a domain where they spend six hours a day, which is worth knowing and is easy to miss. Name the objects where they are, since every item on this list is within reach in a classroom. Eight minutes covers the fourteen.
What to listen for
Watch for the pattern of what is missing. A bilingual student typically has home vocabulary in Spanish and school vocabulary in English, and this deck maps exactly onto the gap. Notice tarea and pupitre, which have no exact single-word English equivalent a child would use — homework and desk are close and not identical.
Carrying it home
Ask a child in Spanish what they did at school. The answer requires this vocabulary, and a family that asks in Spanish gets it practised daily without any materials.
Questions
- Is this board in Spanish?
- Yes, all fourteen words are Spanish. This page is in English so an English-speaking clinician can find and evaluate it.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all fourteen cards play with no account.
- Why does school vocabulary go missing in Spanish?
- Because school happens in English for many bilingual students. They spend six hours a day with these objects and hear them named only in one language, which leaves a real gap in the other.