March Music Madness 2017

Posted on February 18, 2017 by SpanishPlans

It’s here! Our favorite time of year: When 16 songs go head-t0-head to see which hit will de declared the winner of March Music Madness. Our 2016 Bracket was a success, with students falling in love with the eventual winner.

And after receiving many inquiries about our 2017 Bracket, we are please to finally release our official bracket. We had a hard time narrowing down a list of just 17 songs that were just right for our annual tournament. We wanted to make sure that all songs were school appropriate for a wide range of audiences and avoided songs with references to sex, alcohol, or objectification. We wanted this year’s bracket to feature songs that were current, with well known artists, and genres that appeal to students. Without further adu…. the March Music Madness 2017 Bracket: Continue reading →

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Lectura Libre

Posted on January 16, 2017 by SpanishPlans

I finally started “FVR” or Free Voluntary Reading time with my students this last week. For an idea on what FVR is, check out this post by K.Placido, “Sustained Silent Reading in Language Class“.

Our first day we spent 5-6 minutes reading. My goal is to do this 1-2 times per week and grow from there.

My FVR Library:
-TPRS novels, most from FluencyMatters.com: Robo en la Noche, Capibara con botas, Brandon Brown series, Peter va a Colombia, Fiesta Fatal, Felipe Alou, among others.
-Class stories that I have compiled into 2 binders.
-Stories from Blaine Ray’s “Look I can Talk” book.
-Stories purchased from TeachersPayTeachers. (You can check out some of ours at SpanishPlans, such as a Simon’s Cat embedded reading).

Reading Log:
Since the purpose of FVR is to let the students enjoy the reading it is important not to make it cumbersome by adding some type of assignment to it. However, I am trying this reading log, more-so to let kids keep track of what they are reading so they can choose the same book if they wish to continue. We shall see if this is a something I continue with. But if you’d like a copy, you can download it as a PDF (lectura-libre-fvr-log)  or editable Word file (fvr-log).

fvr-reading-log

 

 

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Creating Listening Activities

Posted on December 18, 2016 by SpanishPlans

In the TPRS classroom, creating your own listening activities can be super easy. You can utilize this approach to create your own cloze cloze activities or record your own audio of a story.tprs-audio

The process is simple. Every computer has Continue reading →

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Resources for Navidad

Posted on December 14, 2016 by SpanishPlans

With many schools entering their final days before winter break, I wanted to share some quick and easy lesson plans to get you through your final days! Enjoy!

MovieTalk:
Pedacito de Navidad Video
Justino Y la Loteria: A free movietalk lesson from Martina Bex

Escribir una Carta a Santa: Students write a letter on what they want.

Song:

Jesse y Joy: Estaré en tus brazos: En Tus Brazos Estaré LessonJesse y Joy Cancion para Navidad.png
Check out these “Querido Santa” tweets:

QueridoSanta Tuits.png

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Yellow Summary

Posted on December 6, 2016 by SpanishPlans

In the TPRS classroom, we want our students to be reading and reading. Giving them tasks that make students re-read a story gives them a focus without realizing they are reading

yellow-summary

the story again.

One such technique is what I am calling  “Yellow Summary”. In this task, students highlight the most important events of the story. When they are finished, what they have highlighted should represent a decent summary of the story.

As students are re-reading, they have to Continue reading →

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Cyber Monday

Posted on November 27, 2016 by SpanishPlans

In addition to the TeachersPayTeachers Cyber Monday Sale, we have some other special announcements: Continue reading →

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Celebrity Face Masks

Posted on November 15, 2016 by SpanishPlans

Oh my god, you guys!! Look who visited my class today! juanes-mask

I had my fan girl moment as Juanes was part of our class story. We’ve also had visits previously from Beyonce (not Bey-doce or Bey-trece), John Cena, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Kanye West. But you are in luck. You can have them visit your classroom too…. Continue reading →

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Verb Shout: TPRS Reading Activity

Posted on November 7, 2016 by SpanishPlans

We just finished up our La Llorona Unit, which was our first story in la-llorona-movietalkSpanish 1 that we introduced in the past tense. Our prior stories this year were all present tense. Our Llorona story featured the background of the legend itself and then included a brief movietalk.

We had the following targeted structures written on the board throughout the story. We used the 3rd person past tense to narrate the story and by incorporating student actors, we could ask the actor tprs-verb-shout-activitya question in the tú form and have them respond in the yo form to get reps of the 1st and 2nd person in present tense.

Students were already familiar with the structures of tiene and busca as well as the present tense of hay, está, and es. Through the background story of Continue reading →

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1st semester Spanish

Posted on October 31, 2016 by SpanishPlans

These are the stories that I’ve used in my first semester 8th grade Spanish class (Level 1).
spanish-1-curriculum-stories

Wildebeest Movietalk: Hay, Dice, Ve. Martina Bex has this great Embedded Reading/Movietalk which is a perfect thing to start the year. This lesson you can download for free.

To go along with the video, I teach other common animals and we watch the video el lavacaPollito Pio.
I then read them the book La vaca que dice Oink, (preview here) which we use to talk about the benefits of being bilingual. Through the story, it is totally comprehensible and gets in the rep of dice. You can also use this video as  MovieTalk about a pez that says Gua Gua.
I also used the book “Oso pardo, oso pardo, que ves ahi”.

Va a Mexico TPRS StoryThe next story was Va a Mexico that focuses on the strucures Va a, Tiene, y Está en. I use this story after students put together their class passport.

To go along with the structures of “va a” we listened to the video Continue reading →

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Soy Yo by Bomba Estereo

Posted on October 27, 2016 by SpanishPlans

soy-yo-movietalkI’m sure by now you’ve heard about this song and video. If not, you’re gonna love it. Here’s how I recently used it in my class:

1. Students work on “Soy Yo” packet by Kara Jacobs. I used 5 pages: the vocab page, the paragraphs where students write out the Spanish word by pulling the vocabulary from the paragraph, the full story (circle the answer), and the Imaginemos page.

I actually used this as a sub plan and it took a majority of my students almost the entire 40 minute class period.

2. Students watch the video. Hopefully you have youtube unblocked at your school and have access to technology so students can do this at their own time. Otherwise, you will have to show them the video to the whole class.

3. For students who finish early, you can have them practice the vocabulary on Quizlet.

4. The next day, I have students complete an Edpuzzle activity. If you have never used edpuzzle, you will Continue reading →

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