"¡Lo veo!" An introduction to Direct Object Pronouns

I love my Spanish 2 class.  They make  me laugh, and, amazingly enough, they still have energy at the end of the day.  6th period can be a drag for everyone, even the teacher, if everyone is exhausted and listless.  Not so for this group!  And in case anyone ever asks you, yes, high school students still love games!

Today we reviewed direct object pronouns.  My favorite way to present this grammar is with a game of "Lo veo!"  The vocabulary we are working with currently is for traveling. (My text is Avancemos! 2).  I recommend using your current vocabulary, just because it is another chance for students to make a visual and emotional connection to new words.  Of course, you can do the activity with any four words.

Here are my words:
Masculine/singular: el avión                       Feminine/singular: la auxiliar de vuelo
Masculine/plural: los pasaportes               Feminine/plural: las maletas

And here are the objects: 

Los objetos para jugar ¡Lo veo!

The doll and the plane were Dollar Store finds. The doll has a paper hat and some PanAm wings glued on.  The suitcases are novelty candy containers, painted and decorated with paper "travel stickers."  The passports are actually just color copies stapled on to recycled paper.

I took pictures of each object and put them on my SmartBoard.  Then I hid each object somewhere in plain sight in the room. When students entered they saw these phrases on the board:

El "guión" para la actividad

We talked about each picture and wrote the words in the first blank on each line.  I had the students look around the room to find each real object as we put the pictures in place.  Whoever saw it first called out, "Lo veo!" (Or, of course, whatever phrase was correct), and then got to bring the item to the front of the room.  We filled in the second blank with the correct direct object pronoun.  In the end, it looked like this:

¡Listos para jugar!

And then we were ready to play!  One student left the room.  The class first decided to hide the passports in plain sight and we put the rest away.  The student came back in and had to go through the list, asking about each item in turn: "¿El avión?"  And the class replied, "No lo veo."
                           "¿La auxiliar de vuelo?"                  "No la veo."
                           "¿Los pasaportes?"                        "¡Los veo!"        And the game was on.

The student had to walk around the room, asking, "¿Los pasaportes?", and each time the class would reply, "Los veo." The closer the student got to the hiding place, the louder the class replied.  It was a blast.

Here is a final picture:  The flight attendant "hiding" on the bulletin board behind my desk.  She couldn't have been in plainer sight, but it took forever to find her.  I love it that they had to repeat such a challenging vocabulary word over and over and over again!   I think she is going to live on that board from now on!

¿La ves?

Have a happy week!