Saturday, May 30, 2015

Art and Speaking Skills in a Foreign Language Classroom {Free Printable}

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As a language teacher, any time you can mix culture with language skills you up the amount of learning in your lessons. Last year with one of my most advanced students I started printing off interesting pictures for us to discuss in Spanish. It then occurred to me that we could do the same activity with the great works from various Spanish/Hispanic artists. Not only will my students get exposed to beautiful artwork, but they will also be able to practice their speaking skills.

In order to set up this activity you need a set of questions you can use with any painting and copies of the art itself.  Below you will find a free printable in Spanish of questions you can ask your students in order to get them talking about different paintings. As far as collecting the art you want to use here are several options:
  • You can also use art books to show pictures. 
  • You can print them from the web. Here is my pinterest board on teaching art and Spanish. It contains lots of paintings, and I plan on adding more. 
Here is a list of artists/paintings I am planning on using:

  • Diego Velázquez {Las Meninas/Tres Músicos}
  • Fernando Botero {La Menina,/Terremoto en Popayan}
  • Alejandro Xul Solar {Cuidá y Abismos,/Vuell Villa}
  • Joan Miró {La Finca,/Caballo, Pipa y Flor Roja}
  • Pablo Picasso {El Guitarrista Viejo/La Sopa}
  • Diego Rivera {Cargador de Flores/Zapata}
  • Oscar Tintaya {More modern Bolivian artist with typical scenes of that area}
  • Salvador Dalí {La Persistencia de la Memoria}
  • Raúl Soldi {Sarita}
  • Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida 

Here is the free printable with questions you can use to discuss the paintings.



Have fun using art to keep your students speaking in Spanish!

8 comments:

  1. Thanks Debbie..these ideas are great! ;-)

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  2. Art will always be a great learning tool :)

    Thanks for sharing Debbie

    Regards
    Rodrigo Rmz
    Galerias de Arte

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  3. Thank you for sharing this is an amazing idea!!

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  4. Hola Debbie: I like this activity very much, and I love the integration of art, culture and language. I teach elementary Spanish, so I will need to modify the questions, but thanks a bunch for providing a wonderful framework!

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  5. Really interesting. I'm going to use it in my English classes. Thank you!!

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