In this post we shared with you our Storytelling lesson related to the Juanes song Fotografia. This story features the structures busca, llama, and está/ no está. You can download FREE Fotografia story or you can buy our editable version which also includes a storyboard.
Fellow Spanish teacher, Zachary Bryant, (@bryantz83) took our lesson and adapted it into the following embedded readings. Here they are: Continue reading
Fun idea to incorporate the “Elf on the shelf” into your Spanish class with “El duende”. Students can describe where he is.
I think Elf on the Shelf is a great way to bring some fun into the classroom. I blogged about the idea yesterday. I shared some cultural situations the elf could present my classroom with, as well as some basic examples that would allow me to get in more repetitions with basic holiday vocabulary. I must confess I was most excited about all of the cultural ideas I came up with, but I also know that students need to be able to discuss their own culture and celebrations before they can compare/contrast to a another.
Before beginning Elf on a Shelf, I decided that I would be the one to name him. I know that a big part of the experience is naming the elf with your family, but this is hard to do with three different classes. Sure, I could have created three different names, but honestly I know I…
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My first MovieTalk and I loved it. I used the short animation, Alma, with my first year students and it went great. We were able to use the movie to practice so much language:
1) structures of quiere, puede, mira, ve, busca
2) review clothing vocab, review preposition, review some emotions and learn a few new ones
Use wordle to check the frequency of the structures in your story
You can use this with any class/level and focus on any aspect of the language appropriate to your students.
Here’s what I did in my class: Continue reading
In a performance and proficiency based classroom, students coming from traditional classroom needs some guidance. Musicuento uses an example of a “Talking about a taco” to show the different proficiency levels.
Can you use singular words to talk about a taco? Can you uses phrases? Can you use whole sentences? These are all part of performance of a language from novice low to novice high.
This year I’ve been using this image I found online from the Shelby County Schools. They also have a cute “Path To Proficiency” image as well. I used the poster maker at my school to make a large version to hang up on my wall. On performance assessments, I’ll write the quote “How many scoops will you use?” and sometimes may add a small ice cream cone clipart.
I like using this image to challenge my students to how many scoops they will use. We talk about the metaphor that the more scoops your ice cream cone has, the better it will be. The more language they use on their performance tasks, the more language they are showing me they can use. This also involves a bit of risk taking as well. The more scoops you stack, your cone may become a bit more wobbly, but it is worth the risk because you are going to have more ice cream. You may end up with some ice cream around your mouth as it may get a little “messy”, but it is worth it! If you are only going to use 1 scoop, it might be very stable, but not at all rewarding.
What are the sprinkles on top of the ice cream that is really going to make you happy?
I also challenge my students with a 5 point scale that I hang up in my classroom with example sentences for this “communication rubric”.
While travel is the best way to broaden your perspective, that may be a bit difficult for our students. We talk about the image below of a man standing on top of a stack of books and being able to see over a wall and what that means. One way that students can learn about other cultures and see perspectives is through youth literature. I’ve been working on this project with my school’s librarian for the past few years and she has now over 90 books (List: Hispanic Novels) that deal with the Hispanic culture in our school library and is always adding more.
In additional to reading Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan, my students also choose 1 book per trimester to read at home. [Update: In 2018, students read 2 books per trimester]
These stories, allow students to travel around the world. Students read stories about what it is like to be a migrant family, what is is like to work in the fields, what it is like to face discrimination for being latino, what is is like to have to leave your own country, and many other issues. Take a look at our Map of Hispanic Novels:
My students get a chance to “travel” through the literature they read. Discover new places. Understand different cultures. Empathize with characters. See themselves in different people.
That’s why I love to have students create their own passport. Check out our post about our reading passport which includes a free printable passport.
One of our recent posts had some good quotes to use at bulletin board dealing with perspective. Here are a few quotes relating travel and gaining broader perspective on the world.
To piggyback off one of our earlier posts where we talk about the importance of Perspective in World Language, we wanted to post our perspective images that make up our Perspective Wall to display in your classroom.
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We’ve just finished up 2 new stories with you and wanted to share them with you. Our first story is a story about a boy named Miguel who doesn’t like to study; he wants to play video games. But when he has to talk to the principal he learns a fun way to study that is just like a videogame…
It was wonderful to see so many of of our colleagues join us at the Illinois Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ICTFL) Fall Conference. For those of you who are checking out our website for the first time, read our orientation below:
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Here’s why I love Bell Ringers in my Spanish class:
1) It gets the student working as soon as the come in the room.
2) It’s a great way to get students to use their notes and practice using the language.
3) It allows the teacher a few minutes to do things such as attendance or check in with students.
4) It serves as a solid routine to start the class.
My bell work, which I call Entradas, are a good to teach students to reference their notes. At the beginning of the year, a lot of students look at the question and when they don’t know a word, they just stop. I have to constantly remind them to look in their notes. When we are going over the answers and a student doesn’t know an answer, I make them look back in their notes to find each word until they understand the question.
This week our focus was on the verbs: Can, Want, and Need:
On the first day, it took students a little longer to answer the questions, but by the end of the week, they didn’t need to rely on their notebooks so much and could answer the questions rather quickly.
We’ve got a powerpoint recently updated with over 100 Bell Ringers ready to use.
If you already own this product, download the update for no additional costs.
Another idea that we’ve recently implemented is from The Creative Language Classroom, “Let them Welcome Each Other to Class“. Each week one student from each class is
selected as “Profe de la semana”. After we go over our bell work, the profe gets to ask the typical daily questions, such as ¿Qué día es hoy? ¿Qué hora es? ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? and other questions related to the particular unit. Students are excited to answer questions asked by the new “teacher” and I’m more than happy to sit back and enjoy the break from asking these questions every day!
Here’s an example of a few we’ve got ready for the first few weeks of Level 1: Eres el profesor.pptx Free download
SpanishPlans.org 
