El pretérito indefinido

After having learnt the conjugations of regular verbs in the pretérito indefinido, my students needed to master the endless conjugations of irregular verbs. It is always difficult to know the most effective way of teaching the conjugations of irregular verbs, but I decided to summarise the conjugations in a simple overview worksheet, with the conjugations grouped by colour. The worksheet is available to download here.
 
Once the students had completed the worksheet and it had been checked for errors, I laminated the sheets for them so that we could continue to refer to them in following lessons without them being lost or crumpled – well here’s hoping!
 
Now it was time to practice, which we by completing a worksheet (which is available for download here), and by playing a game with two sets of verb cards (available for download here). We did not practice all the verbs together at one time but divided them into their groups and played in stages.
 
Here are the instructions that I gave to the students:

1. Put the cards face up and match the Spanish verbs with the English verbs.
2. Write the Spanish verbs on the worksheet.
3. Put any cards that you are confident you already to know to one side. Using the remaining cards, turn them over face down and play pairs. Use the worksheet to check each other’s answers.
4. Now look at all of the Spanish verb cards. Categorise the verbs into groups according to their colour, discuss and review the conjugations of these verbs using your laminated sheets.
5. Using the Spanish cards only play the following game:

 

• All the cards should be facing downwards on the table. A student chooses a card and if they know the meaning of the card they can play their turn. If they do not know the meaning of card, they replace it on the table and miss their go.
• To play their turn, the student rolls the dice and conjugates the verb according to the number:
  

            1 = yo, 2 = tú, 3 = él, 4 = nosotros, 5 = vosotros, 6 = ellos

• If the conjugation is correct (the other player can check the conjugation on the laminated cards), they keep the card and score 1 point.
• The player with the most cards and points at the end of the game wins.

 
If you want to mix the game up a little by adding an element of chance then you can also include some ¡Ay caramba! cards. If a student picks an ¡Ay caramba! card before they have won any verb cards, then the ¡Ay caramba! card simply gets put back into the game. However, if a student has already won some verb cards and they then select the ¡Ay caramba! card, they have to give up all of their verb cards and place them back in the game. Be sure to keep the ¡Ay caramba! card out of the game at this point because if they are not removed then the game will go on forever!