This past weekend, I spent my Saturday with nearly 200 like-minded teachers at an amazing conference in Ripon, Wisconsin during the second annual Comprehensible Midwest Conference. It was such an amazing experience and I congratulate the small group that worked so hard to put it all together.
I’ve collected the best tweets of #CIMW17: Continue reading
Sometimes my OCD takes over and my organization monster takes over. So I thought I would share the fruits of my labor with other teachers who want to organize their Spanish classroom library. We’ve got labels of 2 sizes and you can download them for free.
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As we talked about in our previous post, children’s book are usually not the best type of book for a second language classroom, although there is one that we do like. Most of the words are not comprehensible enough to help students acquire the language. And we know that input only aides in acquisition if it is comprehensible. So, if we plan to use 
children’s books, we have to do a little bit of work to make it comprehensible; but thankfully it is really easy. Continue reading
Over the summer, I had time to organize the stories I teach. I was able to a document the story, its targeted vocabulary structures, grammar pop-ups and even cultural notes.
This is for an 8th grade (second year of level 1), however it is the first year they use learn through storytelling.
You will see a mix of Senor Wooly, MovieTalks, and well as stories I’ve written myself. You can check out this google doc and make a copy for your own editing purposes. Continue reading
If you are looking for a fun AND compelling story for your class, but can’t think of one, you’re in luck. Scholastic en español publishes the Fly Guy series in Spanish and boy, are these books great for storytelling and acting out in class.
I typically don’t use a lot of (if any) children’s books in my class, because a lot of them are not comprehensible for my students. However, this series is written and illustrated in a manner that is would be appropriate for early level classes. And if you do it as a class story, you can make it 100% comprehensible.
I first checked out the book Hombre Mosca y Frankenmosca from my local library and loved it so much I bought my own copy and plan to use it as a story during Halloween time. This story is perfect for beginning level students because Continue reading
In 15 days, Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off in the United States. For those of you who have followed this blog, you know that I love to teach my students about the importance of perspective.
I’ve also used the theme of travel to have students create their own passports. This year, in the second week of school, students put together their passports. They were able to follow the directions I gave in the target language, as I modeled the expected steps. This year instead of leaving the inside pages blank, I put the list of Hispanic Novels that my 
school librarian has collected for me. (OVER 100 NOVELS!!)
Using the image above, we talked about what learning about cultures does. My goal is for my students Continue reading
If you want to see how effective reading can be in the world language classroom, just ask your students. As our year is winding down, I had students fill out a google survey to get some of their feedback and thoughts on this year. This first survey focused on getting feedback on reading a class novel as well as FVR.
The first question and answers that I’ll share this week was “Being able to read a novel in Spanish makes me feel….” and students finished the sentence. Read what they said: Continue reading
You may think that celebrating cinco de mayo in your Spanish class is a fun reward for students at the end of the year to celebrate a year of language learning. But what are 
dangerous effects? As an educator are you OK with promoting stereotypes? Sure, you may teach the what Cinco de Mayo really is, including it’s history. But what are students going to remember? It won’t be a lesson in history. It will be: We had a party on Cinco de Mayo. I’ve seen it first hand. My students ask me every year if we are going to have a party. Why? “We had one last year.” For what? “This is Spanish class!” So? “It’s a Mexican holiday”
I’m sure you already have your own opinions and this blog post is not going to change your mind. But please, keep an open mind on what message your are sending to your students. Certainly no teacher wants to perpetuate stereotypes. So please, make sure your students know that the Mexican Culture is #MoreThanSombreros / #MasQueSombreros and that putting on a fake mustache can be offensive to many people. And just because you have a Mexican friend who is not offended, does not mean that no one is.
In this current political setting, Mexicans are feeling more marginalized and under attack than ever, so it is important to recognize their positive impacts in our society.
For further reading, please check out Tolerance.org article: What is Cinco de Mayo?
I think most of you will find this article eye-opening as well: Rethinking Cinco de mayo
Watch this video:
The following is another CI activity that you can use with a chapter reading or with random sentences using a targeted structure. This activity gets in extra reps of the phrases in an engaging and fun manner, which is really the key; trick students into hearing the same phrases without getting bored.
If you are using a novel in your class, you can also use this activity Continue reading
While reading the Fluency Fast novel Esperanza by Carol Gaab, one of the main themes is la injusticia. While I know that some teachers use this book in high levels (2/3), I use it with my level 1 students in eighth grade. The vocabulary includes many words that my students have acquired through storytelling throughout the year already, so there is not 
much pre-teaching I have to do in terms of vocabulary.
The themes such as unions, justice, and immigration are all worthy topics to explore.
We had just finished chapter 3, where the workers decided to strike. We previously had read the lectura from the Teacher’s Guide about Sindicatos, but I still had to give examples of what the point of a union was. While giving a short reading comprehension quiz (also from the Teacher’s Guide) I decided to make a simulation. As I was passing out the quiz, I said Continue reading
SpanishPlans.org 