Mi casa

La casa

Talking about different homes and different styles based on geography has always been exciting to me. When the unit of La casa approaches my classroom, I try to do new and different things that engage my students in different ways.

As a creative person, I encourage my students to experience language through crafts, colors and more! I try to bring different options to accommodate those less creative and there is always a more open ended approach that my most creative students can take and go wild!

In the past, I have used homes to address cultural topics like Cinco de Mayo. You can read that here.

This time around, I wanted to students to see the value of pictures as a mean to familiarize themselves with new vocabulary. We often doodle and create connections in that manner, so I had high hopes for this manipulative.

Visuals are super important for our young learners, but never underestimate the power of a "cute" handout when you teach older students (high school and college). These simple activities in those age groups can really spark wonderful conversations in the target language.

This week, we are starting a unit on houses: rooms, furniture, accessories, etc. We are also working hard on spatial descriptions and physical ones as well. Students usually resort to copying their vocab on their notes or Quizlet. Enter @FunforSpanishTeachers' lovely resource. My students loved labelling it, coloring it and just getting creative with it.

The second day after it has been labelled and customized, my students will walk the classroom and chat with different partners about their unique homes. They will talk about what rooms they can find in the home, what furniture, accessories, etc. They will review how to create descriptions and be able to share details of their particular homes.

¿Cuántos cuartos tienes?

¿Cuál es tu cuarto favorito y por qué?

¿Cómo es tu sala?

¿De qué color es el sofá en tu casa?

But this is just the beginning!!!

Another approach for our more novice learners is to come up with sample questions as a group, have them displayed or written on the board along with some sample answers. This will build the student's confidence and serve as a resource for when they may feel stuck. You more proficient students will not need the help, but it will make a huge difference to those who may struggle a bit.

Stay tuned for more house resources and ideas.

I have no business relationship with Fun For Spanish Teachers. I just bought this resource and loved it so much I wanted to share. 
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/La-Casa-House-Interactive-Notebook-3702194

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Guided drawings

Guided drawings

My children LOVE  to draw, color and create stories from drawings. During this time, I have found some incredible tutorials to keep us entertained. 

I have also started creating some for my students in order to make sure that we have fun, keep them creative, but also reinforce some of the concepts we had been learning in class these last few months. 

Check them out here on my YouTube channel. If you find them helpful, share the link in your lessons! 

**I am not good at drawing, so my examples are simple and doable by my 4th-8th graders and even my college students! There is no excuse for them not to have fun!**

These are the originals:

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Versus the wonderful submissions from some of my students:

 

   

Since my own kids know all my "party tricks", I did some digging and found some awesome, talented artists that could help us out. Here are some of our family favorite:

- Doodles with Mo Willems: The incredible creator of my Kinder's fave Piggy and Gerald has taught us SO much about the art of drawing. Enjoy his tutorials HERE.  He even taught us to make some cute animations and inspired us to have dinner and doodles

- Spanish playground has a cute panda session HERE. 

- FUN and free printable guided drawings from one of my favorite clip artist on Teachers Pay Teachers: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Check them out HERE.

- Cute Spanish videos on YouTube HERE.  

- The dude from the Underpants books!!!! Check it out HERE. 

Have you found OR created any doodling places that you love? Share them in the comments!

Stay inside everyone and let us get through this together!

❤️Andrea

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Our first día de los muertos

Our first día de los muertos

Last year, my kids lost their beloved great gpa on Halloween. He was the first person in their lives to leave them, and he definitely left a huge hole in their hearts. That October, Coco also came out in and a few months later we had the DVD and watched it at home.

We are a Colombian family, so día de los muertos  is not something I grew up celebrating. In fact, there is not a lot that I know about that celebration. But watching the movie with my kids started some very interesting conversations between us. While I am not claiming that the movie is 100% accurate or truly representative of the real traditions, it made my kids think about those who have left us and gave them an idea on how to remember them. I have also read some articles that show support for the representations shown in the movie.

So, for the next year they kept looking for ideas on how to decorate their altar. My parents went on a trip to Guanajuato, Mexico and brought them traditional items. We also found some additional items while shopping around our local stores. They were determined to replicate the altars they saw in the movie. They spoke with their Titos (their Colombian grandparents) about the idea, and decided to include some extra people in their altar.

Long story short, my kid's need to connect with their beloved grandfather made me research more about the day itself. So, I have found these amazing resources that I would like to share with you as well.

I hope that you can use this in your classroom or at home. 

**Please leave a comment if you have any other resources that I could add to this blog**

Facts about the celebration. 
1. Download these cards and talk to your students about the holiday.
2.  Watch this short film that shows a young girl experiencing the celebration and understanding its meaning better.
3. Here is National Geographic's things to know about this day.

Celebrations around the world. 
1. Celebrating the day in Mexico. Read more about it here.
2. Carolina, from Fun for Spanish teachers, shares how Guatemala celebrates this day. Read more here.
3. Julie, from El Mundo de Pepita, shares Ecuador's celebration. Learn more about it here.
4. Take your students around the world. Show them these ten places. As a follow up, they could investigate further these locations, or they could find new ones to add to the list.

Crafts for the classroom.
1. Coloring calaveras and alebrijes can be an appropriate activity for your students once they understand why they are doing it. You could even build an altar in your room with their examples and ask them to color one to honor someone they miss. Check out these incredible free coloring pages.


Culture through food
1. Laura, from el Tarro de los Idiomas, shares a recipe for pan de muerto!  Great way to engage your students and perhaps add to your altar. Recipe found here.

Remembering their loved ones. 
In order to help my kids better connect to their grand father and this celebration itself, I asked them to write down things they remembered about him. We used this resource to do it and added it to our altar.

I hope that you have found this list helpful and that your students can better understand this incredible celebration of life. I know my kids and I had a great time.

Our first altar did not disappoint! Kids help me set it up and they wrote their thoughts on grandpa. They were very excited to continue to learn about this tradition and improve our altar for next year.
       
         


Thanks  Prettygrafik for the clipart

La ropa

¿Qué llevas?

It is time to get dressed and have some fun!

My students were asked to design outfits for their new friends. Then depending on their level, we did different activities. 

In the past I worked with K-8 and and this is how we approached this topic:

K-3rd?: For each grade level I had designed an appropriate list of vocab words that I know they were able to grasp. We used lots of movement to "put" those items on. In some classes, the students even brought extra clothes to dress up and play some serious rounds of "Simon dice"!

3rd-8th: The older grades were able to talk more about them. So for example they would give them new names, ages, nationalities. They would present their "new" friend to the class. My older groups would also venture into descriptions of the clothing items, tell us where they shop for this items and what their favorite things were. They also partnered up and expressed what items they liked or disliked from the outfit of their partner's new friend. We had a great time!

Currently, I work with high schoolers... this is how we worked this same activity. 

High school: My high school students did the same steps as the younger ones but you can always take it a bit further. Currently we are working with pronouns after prepositions as well as stem changing verbs. So, I tried to tie it up together and created some conversation cards that they were able to use in small groups. We did our basic introductions for the "new" friend and then we incorporated weather and seasons and described what we wear in each season. 

       

We also worked with descriptions and adjective agreement by using colors and textures as adjectives. In order to keep "old" material fresh, we also went shopping. Images of clothing items were posted around the room with different price tags. They were each given a budget and asked to shop around. Then we gathered and volunteers could share what they purchased.

For homework, students had to address the different conversation cards in writing so we could focus on form and spelling. 

Overall the students in all grade levels were very responsible to the activity and enjoyed creating their own materials.

One fun game that you can create after students have present their friends, is a game of guess who. You can draw 5 random ones and display them on the board. Then read aloud some clues about those cards and have the students guess which friend those clues refer to. They can play individually or in small teams. Get ready for some intense competition =D

You can download the whole pack here. It will include the pronoun after preposition lesson; the characters to color; the conversation cards (12total) and the answer sheet. 

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El calendario Azteca

El calendario Azteca

¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños?
¿Cuántos años tienes?
¿Cuáles son los días de la semana?
¿Qué te gusta hacer los martes?
¿Cuál es tu rutina diaria?

These are just some of the concepts that you can review using this cool idea. I found it many years ago and have used it to help my students improve their presentational skills!

Here is how it works:
1. In the outer ring, they will jot down the months of the year. They can use images that represent each month. I ask my students to make their birthday month stand out. 
2. The middle ring represents the days of the week. They can also represent each day with images about things they enjoy doing on those days. I ask them to make the day in which they were born stand out as well.  
         *Use this to review gustar, or to review reflexives and daily routines. 
3. The center can be used in different ways:  
         *The year in which they were born 
         *The current year with a drawing of who they are today. 

When the project is done, half of the students line up around the classroom and half of them will walk around. In a way, these students because "art pieces" in our live museum. This will allow half of the class to present to smaller groups. I have found that this is less intimidating for my shy students.
I set a timer, and when the timer goes off, the rolls reverse.

If you would like to try this in your classroom, download it here.

Did you try it in your classroom? I would love to read about it! Leave me a comment!!

Here are some of the examples from my classroom.

          

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How I Cinco de Mayo

How I “Cinco de Mayo”.

Every year, I think SO hard about ways in which I can educate those around me about Cinco de Mayo. “Why does she need to do that?”, you may ask. Well, this year I had one of my favorite bloggers put into words the things I was feeling! This is what she wrote: 

“I remember my first year as a Spanish teacher in the United States. I was also new in the country and have to admit that I had never heard of "Cinco de Mayo." I was quietly walking into the school library when I suddenly heard "Happy Cinco de Mayo." Happy Cinco de Mayo? What was that all about? It was another teacher wishing me the best Cinco de Mayo ever! I was so confused and asked, "What are you talking about? Cinco de Mayo?" She opened her eyes widely and told me, "I can't believe it! You are a Spanish teacher and you don't know anything about Cinco de Mayo?" She was so right, I didn't know anything about it! I was so embarrassed and shyly said, "No, I don't know anything about it." Oh, well, it's a Mexican celebration", she said.  And that answer was how our conversation ended. 

I went to look for the other Spanish teachers in the district and they told that me they didn't want this to be included in the curriculum, that this was a celebration filled with a lot of stereotypes, burritos, tacos and other icons that don't even exist in the Mexican culture. As years went by, I decided that it was not to be a big part in my curriculum, that it was not even important to mention it or include other Mexican celebrations in my class. How wrong I was! Soon enough I learned that as a language teacher, it is my responsibility to help guide that young people beyond stereotypes. I heard things I am sure other Spanish teachers have heard: "El Dia de los Muertos" is like Halloween, or the Cinco de Mayo is the Mexican Independence Day. 

I have decided to take a more proactive role, to educate myself about other cultures and share what I know with my students. This is why, I, a Colombian Spanish teacher celebrate "El Cinco de Mayo." I have challenged myself to take my students beyond sombreros, tacos and burritos.”  http://funforspanishteachers.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-do-i-celebrate-cinco-de-mayo-in-my.html

So this year, I was also inspired by one of her blogs (http://funforspanishteachers.blogspot.com/2016/06/proyecto-para-ninos-la-casal-azul.html?m=1)

and incorporated it into my classes. In her blog, aimed for elementary educators, she teaches everyone about Frida Khalo and then has a fun project about making Frida’s “casa azul”.  The units being presented in my classes lend themselves to be able to create a short biography about who she was (preterit vs. imperfect) for one class, and my other class wrote some descriptions about the house itself (ser vs. estar). The results were incredible and multi-purpose! 1. Students were educated on what Cinco de mayo really is about; 2. they learned more about other cultures (mexican) by reading about Frida; 3. researched and used what we were learning in class; 4. HAD FUN by creating their own houses!

Take a look at some of the spectacular samples.

UPDATE:   Since writing this post in 2017 the world has changed a LOT! With 2020 and COVID, many places have made virtual tours to give us a way to travel. 

Check out this amazing tour of Frida's "Casa azul"

http://www.openculture.com/2020/08/take-a-virtual-tour-of-frida-kahlos-blue-house-free-online.html?fbclid=IwAR3GXS2kOW5IDwOraH7-Jdy0E390act0fv8kBZC9RRiYrEQG2Q_8s6iimys

 

Los monstruos!

Hola everyone,

Halloween is around the corner and my current unit about clothing and reflexive verbs fits perfectly with a review of body parts as well.

This has been one of the most entertaining lessons we have had as a group and I hope their energy and enthusiasm continues as we wrap up the trimester. Never underestimate your teenage students! They LOVE "kid like" activities.

First students listened to a description I made about a particular creature that I had created. While listening, they were asked to draw the things they heard. After the listening part was over, we compared our end results. It was fun for them to see how differently each of them interpreted the same information! Let them tell you why it was different or why it was the same. If you sample one of the possible dialogues, you can break out into partners or small groups for a more intimate conversation.
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Now it was THEIR time to create! Each student had to come up with 10 original descriptions about their character. For the purpose of our lessons, they had to include reflexive verbs as well! There was lots of laughs and comparisons going on. Once the written portion was completed they had to create their visual representation.
**The sky was the limit for this part.  From digital, to hand drawn, to magazine clippings. All was fair game as long as it matched their description**

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Today, all the final products will be displayed around the room. I will have different students read different descriptions while the rest of them walk the room and have to select what illustration corresponds to what they hear. Since they are very competitive, I am sure a winner will emerge and some candy will be shared!

Happy Wednesday, and have a great Halloween week/weekend with your students.

Señora Botero-Moriarty.

**Check out these great illustrations, and be sure to follow me on facebook to see more updates to the blog**  Like me on Facebook

 

UPDATE!!
Since that original post, I have worked with smaller children who have also loved this type of activity.
Check out my store and see the younger learner version of this cool activity as well as some other cool activities related to the body theme.

⭐ Body parts - El cuerpo: Dibuja un monstruo
⭐ Body parts - El cuerpo "Yo tengo, ¿Quién tiene?"
⭐ Body parts - El cuerpo

Mi cara, by 3rd grade

In the 3rd grade students were learning the different parts of their face. We learned a song that will help us remember terms like face, eyes, nose, mouth and a class favorite: popcorn!

After students mastered the song and terms it was time to do a fun project. Inspired by the art of Picasso, students received a template of a face and different options to create unique faces. We worked on reviewing our colors, numbers and the parts of the face while creating our funny faces. Once finished, students presented their masterpieces to the classroom. We all had a fun time sharing how silly our faces looked.

Have your children sign the song to you or show you their funny face! We had a great time!!!!

**Recreate this activity by visiting patchimals.com**