KS3 · Spanish · Year 8

In class and at home: modal verb 'podemos'

Comparing what people do: -ER and -IR verbs

Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.

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Your learning goal

I can use an expanding range of words to talk about everyday activities that I and others can do in class and at home.

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In class and at home: modal verb 'podemos': slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.

Original teaching resources

The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.

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What you’ll learn

I can use an expanding range of words to talk about everyday activities that I and others can do in class and at home.

Key learning points

Listening to words with final and penultimate syllable stress helps to develop the ability to identify the stress.
Making vocabulary links using antonyms or words with related meanings can enhance recall.
The verb 'poder' is a modal verb and means 'to be able to', 'can'.
Most present tense forms of 'poder' have a vowel change in the stem, ('puedo'); 'podemos' (we can) has no vowel change.
The verb 'poder' is always followed by an infinitive, e.g. 'Podemos participar en clase.'

Words to know

penultimate (syllable) stress: pronouncing the second-last syllable more heavily than other syllables in a word
antonym: word that has the opposite meaning of another word
modal verb: verb of necessity or possibility used with a 2nd verb in the infinitive, e.g. must, can, want
poder: modal verb that means to be able to/can

Common mistakes

All present tense forms of the model verb 'poder' have the same vowel change in the stem, o-> ue.

The 1st, 2nd, 3rd persons singular ('puedo', 'puedes', 'puede') and 3rd person plural ('pueden') forms all have a stem change from 'o' to 'ue' but 1st person plural 'we' form is 'podemos'; it keeps the same vowel as the infinitive 'poder'.

For parents, carers and teachers

During the vocabulary focus in the 2nd learning cycle, teachers may want to remind pupils about their own 'vocabulario', or personal word repertoire, and encourage them to add any words that are important to them to the place set aside for this.