How to Teach Reflexive Verbs in Spanish

"Flint supports me in implementing differentiated instruction because I can have students getting feedback on an assignment while the rest of the class is practicing their conversational skills."

Audrey Lamou, French teacher at St. George's

Why this matters

A middle schooler can conjugate levantar and duchar perfectly and still leave out the "me" in front of them. On paper "levanto a las seis y media" looks almost right to the student who wrote it, and nothing shows them that the sentence now says they lift something at 6:30. The pronoun gets dropped on every worksheet, and the teacher has to wait for the unit test to find out who still writes routines without it.

Reflexive verbs in Spanish and their pronouns

A reflexive verb in Spanish has the subject doing the action to itself, so it takes a reflexive pronoun that matches the subject: me, te, se, nos, os, se (Bowdoin College). The pronoun goes right before a conjugated verb, as in me levanto, or attaches to the end of an infinitive, as in voy a levantarme (University of Texas at Austin). Most daily routine verbs also work without the pronoun, and then the action lands on someone else: me levanto means "I get up", and levantar on its own means to lift someone or something (University of Texas at Austin). Bowdoin's example shows both in one sentence: "Acosté a los niños a las diez y yo me acosté más tarde", which means "I put the children to bed at ten and I went to bed later."

In the Flint activity, each student writes their own morning routine in Spanish, and Sparky turns it into a slide comic with one slide per sentence. A worksheet can only mark "levanto" wrong. The comic draws what the student actually wrote, so a missing "me" shows up as a slide where the student dresses somebody else, and the student finds and fixes the sentence.

Sparky gets Jordan to find his own missing "me"

Jordan ends up fixing three sentences in his own routine and then switching me to se for his brother. Every student gets the same activity and the same greeting, and the comic and Sparky's replies come from each student's own sentences.

The comic draws Jordan's own sentencesSparky sends Jordan back to something he wroteA right answer gets a harder sentence

Jordan

Interest: Skateboarding before schoolStarting point: Drops the reflexive pronoun: levanto, ducho

Jordan

primero levanto a las seis y media. luego ducho rapido. me cepillo los dientes y visto con mi sudadera. a las siete patino con mi skateboard en el parque antes de la escuela. despues voy a la escuela

Sparky

¡Me encanta que patinas antes de la escuela! Look at slides 2, 3, and 4. Are you doing the actions to yourself, or to someone else?

Jordan

wait in slide 4 im putting my sudadera on a girl?? i ment i put it on me lol

Sparky

The comic drew it that way because of how you wrote the sentence. Mira tu oración otra vez: "visto con mi sudadera". Think about the other reflexive verbs we use, like "me cepillo" in the same sentence.

Jordan

oh ok. me visto con mi sudadera

Sparky

¡Exacto! The little word "me" tells us the action is happening to you. En la diapositiva 2, escribiste: "primero levanto a las seis y media." En la diapositiva 3, escribiste: "luego ducho rapido." ¿Qué crees que les falta a esas dos oraciones?

Jordan

the me again. primero me levanto a las seis y media. luego me ducho rapido

Understanding check

¿Cómo describes la rutina de tu hermano o amigo? Cambia esta oración: "Me ducho rápido." ¿Cómo sería para él?

Found three missing pronouns in his own routine, then used se for his brother

Jordan answered "mi hermano se ducha rapido. pero se levanta a las ocho lol", and Sparky moved him on to nosotros. Jordan is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened.

What Flint did for Jordan

When Jordan wrote "visto con mi sudadera", the comic showed him putting his sweatshirt on a girl, and he spotted the mistake himself.
Sparky pointed Jordan to "me cepillo" in his own sentence instead of writing the fix for him.
After Jordan fixed levanto and ducho, Sparky asked him to rewrite a sentence for his brother, and he switched me to se.

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

The activity page shows who is still dropping the pronoun

While the class works, Needs attention shows the teacher which student is stuck and on which message. After three or more students submit, activity analytics lists what the class did well, where students went wrong, and a follow-up to practice next.

Flint's activity page for the reflexive verbs comic activity. Needs attention shows that one student has written all six routine sentences with no reflexive pronoun and wrote 'the comic is just random'. Activity analytics says most students found the slide that showed them dressing someone else and added me on their own, and 19 students rewrote a brother's or sister's routine with se. 6 students put the pronoun after a conjugated verb, as in levanto me. The follow-up suggests interviewing a partner and comparing the two routines with nos. The Sessions table lists three students: two submitted and one still in progress. — Example activity page
After a Spanish 1 class turns their mornings into comics
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, the student who calls the comic random is the one to sit with first.

Set up the activity for free

Open the reflexive verbs activity in Flint's public library, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. Sparky makes the comic in each student's chat as soon as the student sends their routine, and students page through the slides with the arrows under the comic. The comic needs no extra setting.

For more Spanish and French activities, see Flint for world language.

Start the activity for free