Here’s a version with the Teacher Meme character:

I took a regular picture of myself for the normal picture and picture with a grumpy face and a picture with an innocent looking face. I then used the powerpoint “Shapes” to create a halo and red triangles for horns. Or if you are tech savy, you can insert a transparent picture of thorns. With the speech bubbles (available in the ‘shapes’ options) I made the dialogue with the advice.

For an assignment/assessment, I tasked students with creating their own struggle of conscience between good and evil by using a character and giving commands relevant to that character.
Here are some samples:

If you are interested in the template for the teacher created pictures, I have included this template (with the speech bubbles, halo, and thorns already there, all you have to do is insert 3 pictures of yourself) in this Project available on TeachersPayTeachers.

One of the most important tasks outside of language learning that world language teachers face is to make our students aware of the world outside their community. To battle their sheltered lifestyle, I try to have them realize that some things can be different in other countries and to have them embrace these differences rather than judge them.

At the beginning of the year, I talk with my students about the word “perspective” and what that means, which is a cross-over from their social studies curriculum. One example I give them is what we refer to as the “US-Mexican War” is referred to as the “US Invasion” in México. The title alone shows how the event is viewed in each country.

They are super surprised when I ask them ¿Cúantos continentes hay? and when they respond with seven I tell them they are wrong. From the perspective of Latin America there are only 5.

One of the important lessons I emphasize when talking about culture is the language we use. When presented with cultural information that is unusual to American normals a lot of students will remark how “weird” it is. It’s not weird to them! “Weird” can infer a negative judgement, so while something may be “different” that doesn’t make it “weird”. That is their way of life. That is their normal. Instead of judging, it is important to understand the history or culture on why things are done they way they are.

Some readings/resources on giving the students a global perspective:
Readings:

• From Teaching Tolerance, “Don’t Call me Puerto Rican”  and “Immigrant Dreams“. TT has discussion questions, but it appears the first article you now need to purchase (99 cents).
• Blog post about the stereotypes people still have about Colombia including 12 things you shouldn’t do. (Might want to change the title before sharing with students).
• I have my students read young-adult novels, including Esperanza Rising, for students to see the perspective of these characters and what their life is like.
• Breaking stereotypes about Mexican with tagline “More Than Sombreros“
• Pictures of 20 different classrooms from around the world.
• Pictures of a week’s worth of groceries from 20 countries around the world (US, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador)
• Pictures of school lunches from 20 countries around the world.

Songs:

• “Colores, Colores”  by Bacilos expresses the importance of diversity and that we are all the same color on the inside.
• “De que me sirve la vida” by Camila has a great music video, with a message of tolerance.
• Many songs talk about the struggles of immigrants such as “A las Tres” by Enanitos Verdes.

For more cultural images/links check out our Hispanic Countries and Culture board on Pinterest.

Please share any other links that we can add to this list!

Música/Videos

• Sr. Mara sings Reflex your Verby
• Youtube Mr. Bean Getting Ready *
• Youtube videos of Los Solecitos (30 second PSA on Washing Hands, Brushing Teeth and others)

Dibujos y Fotos

Actividades

• Showing the Solecitos Sr. Cepillo video? Make your own giant toothbrush from a meterstick. Read about making reflexive verbs fun.
  
• Grammatical Explanation of using reflexive verbs with this complete lesson plan. Great price for a 22 pages of various activities to cover this unit.
• Day in the Life of Project: Have students choose a famous person and narrate what their day looks like.

*This idea came from Teaching Spanish w. Comprehensible Input blog and has 7 ideas for Teaching Reflexive Verbs

Any good resources you use in your class? Find any other good memes utilizing reflexive verbs? Please share in the comments section!

Música/Videos

• Youtube DIRECTV Argentina: Parecidos 
• Youtube Juanes y Elmo “Manos, Cabeza, Pies“
• Canción “Sigue al lider” great for izquierda, derecha. Sung by Grupo Magia, Sol Habana, or children’s show Los Solecitos.

Dibujos y Fotos

For more pictures, check out our collaborative Spanish Health Unit board on Pinterest.

Actividades

• Use Señor Cara de Papa. I hand out a body part to each student and then ask “¿Quién tiene una nariz?” Whoever has that body part puts it on the body. At the end we can describe our creation! Read more about this activity.
  
• Have the students draw their own monsters and present them to the class. Need a project outline with rubric and over 70 follow up questions to ask during student presentations? Check out our project for sale on TeachersPayTeachers.
  

  

• I also have students draw a monster that is described to them. The first day, I give the descriptions and use bodies that are made up of past vocabulary words like school supplies and food. So it might have a fork for an arm and a ruler as a leg. The second day students describe an alien/monster to their partner and their partner has to draw it. I have students face their partner (one partner facing the board, their partner across from them with their back to the board) and I project one picture on the board. Once the partner is done describing it, the other partner can look at the picture and see how they compare. I tell my students to describe the big picture, not minor details if they don’t have the language for it.
  To make sure they stay in the target language, I love this idea of giving them a strip of paper with percentages of 10. If I hear them speak English, they lose a letter grade (10%). Most students are motivated to speak in Spanish because they enjoy the activity but some might need an extra motivation not to speak ANY English at all.
  

Chistes

-¿Qué le dice un ojo al otro?
-Tan cerca y no nos vemos

-¿Cómo se escribe <<naríz>> en inglés?
-No sé.

Any good resources you use in your class? We’d love you to share your activities or any other good songs or comics with us in the comments section!

Read how to use twitter as your own Professional Development, so you can start following the above people.

We’ve written about this issue before and with the social media campaign hopefully we can cure the public of their misspelling of this beautiful country’s name.

To help students identify these foods and create a lasting impressions I recently created a Bulletin Board of Authentic Hispanic Foods including Pictures and Labels. Each are only $1.00 and ready to print or use immediately in class.

In another section of the room, I took this document (which you can download for free) and enlarged it on our school’s poster maker. As we talked about the foods, many students were eager to try these foods or had already tried them. The students would write their name under that item and write a smiley face if they liked it or frowny face if they didn’t.

Don’t forget to check out our other Comida related posts.

What’s your favorite food from the Spanish Speaking world?

Google Image Search is such an easy way to show students differening vocabulary. Want to compare the word “tortilla” in Mexico and in Spain? Google Image Search “Tortilla” and “Tortilla española”. The students can clearly see the difference directly from the pictures. Can same comparisons with “torta” and “torta de chocolate”

Anyway, we found some great memes incorporating the phrases “Tengo hambre” and “Estoy lleno”.

We’ve compiled 9 of our favorites in a powerpoint which we went over with the students in class. You can download this free ppt file by clicking the image below:

Powerpoint 9 pictures

A fellow blogger, English teacher Tracee Orman of Hunger Games Lessons, gave us this great idea of having students create their own memes. This gets students thinking about their vocabulary and applying it to situations. You can have your students use a meme generator such as ImgFlip, MemeCrunch,  DIY LOL, and this site has memes created in Spanish, but some of the language/themes may not be suitable for student viewing. Others popular generators, which were blocked at my school, were Meme Generator, and Make Me a Meme.

An idea might be to save to certain suitable images to a student server and allow the students to select from those images. They can either add text through a simply image ediing software or copy the image into Microsoft Word and create a textbook, changing the layout of the textbox to “in front of text” so they can move it to a designated position over the picture.

Contest:

Feeling creative? We’d like to encourage you to create your own meme to use in your classroom and share that image with us! Need further incentive? Ok, let’s make a contest out of this. We’ll collect submissions starting now until the start of our Spring Break, March 22. We will post all submissions and the top 5 will win 10 Spanish Postcards! First prize winner will get the 10 Postcards, plus 3 Posters! Please e-mail your meme to spanishplans@gmail.com and we will post submissions after March 22.*

In this post, we share several videos and ways to use them, and also 2 iPad apps to incorporate into La Comida Unit.

PART ONE: Youtube

This Youtube Channel we mentioned in our last post (Videos/Fotos/Chistes for the Food Unit), and today we’d liked to give some specifics on how to use La Receta de la Abuelita, with nearly 300 videos on making traditional Mexican dishes.

The first day, I showed “Receta de salsa roja“. The students watched the 1:58 minute  video. Then I handed each student a notecard and we wrote the recipe. The students summarized the steps, with some help by me with some of the cooking verbs. With the help of the video, and by summarizing, students could see that they could understand the video without understanding every single word.

The next day, we watched a video of “Salsa Caliente Habenera“. Students watched first to get the visual of what was happening, then we watched again as we filled in a cloze activity that I uploaded to wordchamp.com. Students had no trouble typing the words into the iPad, and they could check their answers and get the correct answers after so many tries (which the teacher can set).

Correct answers will show up green, incorrect answers red. After set amount of attempts, the correct answer will appear in yellow

The next day we watched a video from another Youtube user, this time about making  “Agua de tuna“. Tuna is always an interesting word to teach about because students get it confused it the English word “tuna” and think we are making a drink out of “atún”.

Students were also surprised to eat that tacos can be made out of cabeza, lengua, or tripas. Some students were grossed out, but it was a good cultural lesson.

PART TWO: Que Rica Vida Recetario App

This free app features numerous recipes. I assigned students common popular Hispanic dishes such as Gazpacho, Tamales, Enchiladas Verdes, Mole Poblano, among others. In pairs, students looked up the recipe and were tasked with creating a how-to video for the recipe. In my early level Spanish class, students needed to simplify and cut the recipe down to its basic, most important steps. We didn’t worry about measurements.

Receta de Enchiladas Verdes

PART THREE: Educreations App

The free app, Educreations Interactive Whiteboard, allows teachers and students to record tutorial videos. Working in partners, students put together a video on how to make the recipe. Students grabbed pictures of the ingredients by using Google Image Search to look up the ingredients. They then narrated (with visuals) the steps. Obviously, you can do this with any level, changing the requirements to include specific language, such as direct object pronouns, command forms, or Ir + a + infinitive.
In order to give students support, I had them sketch out their draft/script on this free Educreations Draft Map to be checked by me before they started recording. You can also check out our free Educreations App Instructions and Outline download.

Here’s an example of a finished video created in Spanish class:

For resources included in this lesson, including a student project description and rubric for creating the tutorial video, check out this lesson on Teachers Pay Teachers.

“Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language”

The 5 C’s of learning a Foreign Language consist of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities.

We previously talked about how our students connected new Spanish vocabulary words with the stems they were studying in their Language Art classes.

I thought of this next idea as I was prepping to use a song during our food unit. This Jesse y Joy (cloze activity) song, “Una en un millón,” features the following lyrics:

eres la crema en mi café
la cereza del pastel
el agua de mi té

That got me thinking to what other metaphors could the students could come up with on their own. Some examples my students came up with:

eres la leche con mi galleta
eres la leche en mi cereal
eres la mantequilla de mi pan
eres los frijoles con mi arroz
eres la lechuga de mi ensalada
eres los frijoles de la torta
eres el cilantro y cebolla del taco

My mind started to wander from that point and since they were coming up with their own new lyric lines, what if we expanded this to their world. We want our students to see and think Spanish outside our four walls. What if we had students try to apply their learned vocabulary to music they listened to?

How cool would it be if students were listening to their favorite artist and suddenly realized they could translate lines from the song? But not all students enjoy music, so you could have students apply this to movie lines or books quotes as well. This is one way the students can take OWNERSHIP of the language.

I would let the students know that the quotes have to use vocabulary or grammatical structures they have learned that year in your class, otherwise they are just going to find anything and just translate it. The idea is for this to be spontaneous, but a little nudge to start thinking about Spanish in their own everyday lives is a good start. You might turn this into an assignment of 5-10 lines per semester or offer it for extra credit. I think once students start seeing Spanish in things that they actually find interesting, their motivation for the language is going to increase.