Old MacDonald Had A Farm

This is a great low-key lesson to do when your students are worn out…like after a full morning of testing, as will be the case in Anchorage M-W next week! It could also work well as a follow-on for…

• SOMOS Spanish 1 Unit 14, which targets ‘hace’
• SOMOS Spanish 2 Unit 5, which targets ‘hizo un ruido’

Objective: Students will learn that many countries use onomatopoeias very different from ours to represent animal sounds and will learn basic Spanish animal sounds.

Campanada: Students respond to the following questions in complete sentences in Spanish:

1. ¿Qué ruido hace la vaca? – What noise does a cow make?
2. ¿Qué ruido hace el perro? – What noise does a dog make?
3. ¿Qué ruido hace el gato? – What noise does a cat make?
4. ¿Qué ruido hace el pato? – What noise does a duck make?
5. ¿Qué ruido hace la cabra? – What noise does a goat make?

• Write key vocabulary on the side board (students may not know “ruido” (noise) or some of the animal names.
• Discuss answers as a class. Ask students if they own any of these animals, or like/dislike them, have any interesting experience with one of them, etc.

Introduce theme

• Explain that different countries represent animal noises in different ways. For example…(give one of the examples from the Campanada and its Spanish equivalent).
• Show students the bzzz peek website. Have them choose different animals to listen to and different countries.

Introduce song:

• Circle the lyrics and check for understanding (lyrics are attached to the post at the above link)
• Create gestures for each animal
• Sing the song along with the video!
• Make up your own additional verses using bzzzpeek to look up animal noises in Spanish

To extend the lesson for a few more days, you could create a class story about what happens en la granja de mi tío.