A sixth grader is standing in front of a family tree drawn on a big sheet of paper, and she is holding a pencil over the branch where the grandmother goes. She has just read Tarjeta 6, "Mi mamá", and she knows that Lucía Vega Torres is 43, a nurse with long brown hair and green eyes. She knows it because the card told her, in Spanish, and because the Vocabulario section underneath it gave her the words she needed to understand it. Now she has to write Lucía's name and her age in the tree, in the right place, and she looks back at the card one more time to check the spelling. La madre. Forty-three. She writes it in, and the tree is one person fuller than it was a minute ago.
That is what family vocabulary looks like when it works. The words are not on a list. They belong to people, and the people have ages, jobs, hair, eyes, glasses, gardens and newspapers. The Spanish Family Vocabulary Readings is built on that one idea, fourteen times over: fourteen short reading cards about one big family, the Morales Vega family, for Spanish 1 classes. Students meet Andrés and his relatives through the cards, then use the Spanish family vocabulary to label a family tree, answer comprehension questions and do a gallery walk. Every reading card has a Vocabulario section. The set comes in two levels, with a no-footnote version of the cards, a vocabulary reference and a grammar reference, and a quiz, Prueba: La familia, scored out of 20. The set is PDF, US Letter, black and white, and the listing states 42 pages, with answer keys included. The grade range is 6th through 9th grade: the listing's Highlights field says 6th–9th, and it is built for Spanish 1.
One Family, Fourteen Cards
Fourteen cards about one family is a different thing from fourteen cards about fourteen families, and the difference is what makes the set work. A student who meets the Morales Vega family in Tarjeta 1 is still meeting the same family in Tarjeta 14, and by then the names are familiar. Andrés is the center of the family, and the cards introduce his relatives one at a time: Tarjeta 6, "Mi mamá", introduces Lucía Vega Torres, 43, a nurse with long brown hair and green eyes, and Tarjeta 3, "Mi abuelo", introduces Ernesto Morales, 72, who wears glasses and likes working in the garden and reading the newspaper. A student who has read both cards knows two people, and knows how they are related to Andrés, and knows how old they are, and knows what they look like and what they like. That is a family, not a vocabulary list.
The details are the teaching. A nurse with long brown hair and green eyes is a person a student can picture, and a 72-year-old who wears glasses and likes working in the garden and reading the newspaper is a person a student can remember. The vocabulary attaches to the picture: la madre is the nurse with the brown hair, el abuelo is the man with the glasses in the garden. A student who forgets the word can still picture the person, and the picture brings the word back. A word list has no pictures. A family has fourteen of them.
Each card has a Vocabulario section, and that section is where the learning is made explicit. The card tells the story, and the Vocabulario section tells the student which words in the story are the ones to learn. A student reading Tarjeta 6 meets la madre in a sentence, and then sees la madre again in the Vocabulario section, and the second meeting is the one that fixes the word. Two meetings with the same word in the same card is better than one meeting in a list and one meeting on a quiz, because the word is learned in context both times.
The two levels — Nivel 1, "¿Cierto o falso?", and Nivel 2 — mean the same family can be read at two levels of support. A student who is still building confidence reads Nivel 1 and answers true or false, which is a question that can be answered from the card with the card still open. A student who is ready for more reads Nivel 2. The family is the same either way, and the class can talk about the same people afterward. The no-footnote version of the cards is the same idea in a different form: the same cards without the footnotes, for the students who do not need them, or for the day when the class is ready to read without them.
The Family Tree
The family tree page, El árbol genealógico, asks students to write each person's name and age in the tree. That sounds simple, and it is the hardest page in the set, because it asks the student to do two things at once: remember the facts and show the relationships. A name in the wrong branch is not a spelling mistake. It is a comprehension mistake, and the tree makes it visible. A teacher who looks at a finished tree can see, in one glance, whether the student knows who is whose mother, whose grandfather, whose cousin.
The tree is also the page where the vocabulary becomes a system. La familia is not fourteen separate words. It is a structure: el abuelo and la abuela above el padre and la madre, el hijo and la hija beside el hermano and la hermana, el tío and la tía and el primo and la prima off to the sides, el esposo and la esposa, el nieto and la nieta below. A student who can place the words in the tree understands the family, and a student who understands the family can use the words. The tree is the test of whether the vocabulary is a list or a language, and it is a test the student gives themselves, one branch at a time.
Use the tree after the cards, not before them. A student who has not met Lucía and Ernesto yet cannot place them, and a tree filled in by guessing is a tree that teaches nothing. Read the cards first, meet the family first, and then the tree is a review — and a review that asks the student to produce the names and ages from memory is worth more than a review that asks the student to recognize them. The tree is also worth doing twice: once with the cards open, and once, a few days later, with the cards closed. The second time is the one that shows what stuck.
The Vocabulary and Grammar References
The vocabulary reference, La familia, covers el abuelo and la abuela, el padre and la madre, el hijo and la hija, el hermano and la hermana, el tío and la tía, el primo and la prima, el esposo and la esposa, el nieto and la nieta, plus Más palabras. It is the whole family on one page, and it is the page the students will keep coming back to. A student who forgets el primo during the gallery walk can look it up, and the looking up is the learning — the reference is meant to be used, not memorized.
The grammar reference, Gramática útil, covers possessive adjectives, age with tener, describing people with ser, and likes and dislikes with gustar. Those four are the grammar the readings need, and no more. Possessive adjectives, because the family is all about whose mother and whose grandfather. Age with tener, because every person in the family has an age — Lucía is 43, Ernesto is 72 — and the age is always told with tener. Describing people with ser, because the cards describe people: long brown hair, green eyes, glasses. Likes and dislikes with gustar, because Ernesto likes working in the garden and reading the newspaper, and the likes are part of who he is.
Teach the references as tools, not as lessons. The grammar is there because the readings use it, and the student who looks up the possessive adjective while writing about la madre is learning it in the place where it is needed. A grammar reference that is taught as a separate lesson is a page the students will forget. A grammar reference that is used while doing the gallery walk is a page the students will wear out.
The Gallery Walk
The gallery walk works in Spanish and English: post the 14 cards around the room, and students move around and answer 14 "Búsqueda en las tarjetas" questions. The movement is the point. A student who is walking is a student who is awake, and a student who is looking for the answer on a card across the room is a student who is reading with a purpose. The fourteen questions are fourteen reasons to read fourteen cards, and by the end of the walk the student has read the whole family.
A gallery walk also solves the problem of the student who finishes early and the student who finishes late. The walk has no front of the room and no fixed order, so a fast student keeps moving and a slow student is not left behind in front of the class. The questions are the same for everyone, but the path is each student's own, and the teacher can stand in the middle of the room and see, from the movement, who is reading and who is wandering. A student who is standing still in front of one card for a long time is a student who is stuck, and the stuck student is easy to find in a gallery walk because everyone else is moving.
Run the walk in Spanish first, and then in English, or run it with the two languages side by side. The set is built for both: the walk works in Spanish and English, and the questions exist in both. A Spanish 1 class that does the walk in Spanish is doing reading comprehension. A class that does it in English first and then in Spanish is doing the same comprehension twice, and the second time is the one where the Spanish words start to replace the English ones. Either way, the walk is the review, and the review that involves the whole room is the review that sticks.
The Quiz
A quiz, Prueba: La familia, scored out of 20, closes the set. Twenty points is a small quiz, and that is the right size for it: big enough to matter, small enough to take in one sitting, and the score is easy to read — a student who scores 16 out of 20 knows what that means, and so does the teacher. The quiz is the check on everything that came before it: the cards, the tree, the walk, the references. A student who can answer the quiz can use the family vocabulary, and that is the goal of the set.
Use the quiz as a close, not as a surprise. The students have met the family, labeled the tree and walked the gallery, and the quiz asks them to do, sitting down, what they have already done standing up and talking. A quiz that follows that much practice is a fair quiz, and a fair quiz is one the students can pass by having done the work. The answer keys are included, so the checking is quick, and the quick checking means the quiz can be taken and returned in the same period, while the family is still fresh in the students' minds.
The quiz is also the page that shows the teacher what to reteach. A class that misses the possessive adjectives needs the Gramática útil page again. A class that mixes up el tío and el primo needs the tree again. The twenty points break down into the skills the set teaches, and the breakdown is the reteaching plan. A quiz that only gives a score is a quiz that wastes its best information. This one gives the score and the map of what to do next.
What to Watch For
Three things go wrong with family vocabulary, and all three are easy to prevent. The first is the word learned without the person. A student who can say la abuela but cannot say whose grandmother she is has learned a word, not a family, and the word will not survive the week. The fix is the tree: the word belongs in the tree, in its branch, next to its person. A student who places la abuela above la madre has learned the word and the relationship, and the relationship is what keeps the word.
The second is the age told with ser instead of tener. Age in Spanish is told with tener, and a student who writes "Lucía es 43" has made the classic mistake. The fix is the grammar reference, used at the moment of writing: the student who looks up age with tener while writing Lucía's age in the tree is learning the rule in the place where it is used. The reference is on the page for a reason, and the teacher who points at it while the students write is teaching the grammar that matters most in the set.
The third is the gallery walk done as a worksheet. A student who sits at their desk and answers the fourteen questions from memory, or from a single card, has not done the walk. The fix is the movement: the cards are posted around the room, and the answers are on the cards, and the student has to go and find them. A gallery walk that does not involve walking is a worksheet with extra steps, and the steps are the point.
Frequently Asked Questions
What grades is it for?
It is written for 6th through 9th grade, and it is built for Spanish 1. The listing's Highlights field says 6th–9th.
How many reading cards are included?
Fourteen, Tarjeta 1 through Tarjeta 14, each with a Vocabulario section. There is also a no-footnote version of the cards.
Whose family do the readings follow?
The Morales Vega family. Students meet Andrés and his relatives, including Lucía Vega Torres, 43, a nurse, and Ernesto Morales, 72, who wears glasses and likes working in the garden and reading the newspaper.
Does it include vocabulary and grammar references?
Yes. The vocabulary reference, La familia, covers the family words from el abuelo and la abuela to el nieto and la nieta, plus Más palabras. The grammar reference, Gramática útil, covers possessive adjectives, age with tener, describing people with ser, and likes and dislikes with gustar.
Is there a quiz and an answer key?
Yes. There is a quiz, Prueba: La familia, scored out of 20, and answer keys are included.
How does the gallery walk work?
Post the 14 cards around the room, and students move around and answer 14 "Búsqueda en las tarjetas" questions. The walk works in Spanish and English.
