Resources for the Spanish classroom

It has been a while since I blogged.
Lately, I have been focused on creating lots of resource for my children and my students. This leaves me with very little time to share with you some of my fun activities!

Now that we have to be at home all day, every day, I promise to share more here!

Today, let me start with sharing some resources that I have been using for years that have facilitated my teaching, grading and overall instruction.

1. FLIPGRID: The free version allows students to record up to 5 minutes. I have used it for reading comprehension where you can post an open ended question and have students share with you. I have also used it for short presentations. You can enable so that other students have to comment on each other's presentations. Here is a quick video tutorial. 

Great app for speaking assessments that you can just grade at home and all students can submit at the same time!

2. Google forms: A great tool to create quizzes! Simple concepts to open ended questions and multiple choice. Easy to grade as well!

3. Screen recording: On my MAC, I use Quicktime to create screen recordings of lessons. You can create a power point, set it to presentation mode and just talk to your students! For PC, I have found Screencast.com. The free version does have a time limit, but you can make as many videos as you need!

4. Zoom.us: Perfect platform for meeting with students in a group or one on one. Allows you to share screens or white boards. Its recording tool allows you to have videos of those sessions! The free version usually has a time limit on the meeting, but during this time, Zoom has lifted that to accommodate the needs of our communities! Watch this quick tutorial video. No docu cam? NO PROBLEM! Check out my low budget one ;D here. 

5. EdPuzzle.com: Perfect to use with those videos you have found or created. You upload any video, or video link from YouTube, etc., and can add comprehension questions along the way! Also FREE! Watch a quick video tutorial HERE. 

Feel free to comment and share what are some of the apps that are helping you transition into these e-learning days!

Let us be a team and help each other. 

With love, 
Andrea

-------------UPDATE ---------------

Here are some more options I keep remembering and others keep sharing. 

1. Prezi.com: A fun free up to spice up your Power Points! Works really well when you do a screencast. 

2. Flipsnack: https://www.flipsnack.com/. This one is new to me. I am intrigued! If you have used it, please share your experience. 

3. Storyboardthat.com. Perfect for students to create scenes that you can use to review any topic! Its amazing to see those of us with limited drawing skills to have incredible masterpieces!

---------------MORE RESOURCES!--------

Screencastify: https://www.screencastify.com/products/screen-recorder: Another good tool to record your lessons.

Seesaw https://web.seesaw.me/: I am impressed with this app and will be figuring out a way to use it in my classroom. My children are using it and it has so many options! Submit a drawing, write, record video, etc. It all is saved in one quick place so you don’t have to use different apps!

Classkick https://classkick.com/?fbclid=IwAR1HDOYJk7apabSvPAzd6UKR8tiqxm_gr-7FA0RUbeNAfQDurfbuawfAQbI: Seems fun to be able to add content for the students to work independently.

Kahoot https://kahoot.com/: All my students have loved this app. From the young ones, to the “cooler” high schoolers to my college students. You can search pre made Kahoots or make your own. It also prints a report so its great for reviews!

Quizlet http://quizlet.com : Another great resource for students to review the vocabulary. It makes flashcards with visuals, and students can play games to improve their vocabulary skills. Watch my quick tutorial HERE. 

Pear Deck https://www.peardeck.com/googleslides: A fun add on to your Google Slides! It has many templates to include interactive ideas into your Google Slide presentations.

Las vacaciones y la comida!

Today is the last day of a multi "unit" research project -- I know, I know... we are still using textbooks. That's a story for another day.  However, you TOO can make lemonade from whatever lemons you get ;D

I love sending my students on vacation! So, at the start of the trimester I give them a country and from that day forth, this country is their new identity.

First we incorporated our countries in our clothing unit. We first started with simple clothing activities to get us all on the same page, and later students worked with describing traditional clothing items from their countries. I have the basic clothing resource here.

We then moved on to ser vs. estar and I quickly realized we needed a lesson in geography! So we shared in groups the location of our countries in the map. Estar + prepositions of location!! This activity was fun and we did many information gap activities! This was followed by a little research to find information about their countries itself. So we were able to describe our countries a bit better based on their geography, eco-turism, weather, etc. I used this activity to give them examples about what they could do with their own country.

My next unit was the house! Boy I loved this unit!!! First we started with the basics and I used this fabulous resource by Fun For Spanish Teachers. We labelled rooms, we described them, we placed them inside the house! It was just awesome. Then, we looked at what typical homes in our countries looked like and shared that with friends. We drew rooms and partnered with others to see if they could draw our descriptions; we created dream homes. Lots of different ways to talk about homes; worked with these task cards. The possibilities are endless!


But, who lives in the house? The family! Our family unit was a lot of fun because it incorporates the comparatives and superlatives "grammar". We learned our family basics and then compared them to others within our family and to our classmate's families. This gave us a chance to review our adjectives. We shared a lot with each other  by comparing our family members. We found similarities and differences. We also worked on reporting back on the information that we had gathered.

A family is a unit that helps each other, so what better way than to learn some of the household chores that allow us to do things around the house! This is how I tied in the unit on informal affirmative commands! Fun games of "Simon dice" to introduce our topic led us into create "chore lists" and ways in which we can all help get ready for a fabulous fiesta!

Our home was ready, the guest list was finalized, decorations were purchased, and now it was time to eat! and we were VERY hungry !!! We came full circle! Looked up traditional dishes form our countries, described them and created recipe cards. Then, students prepared these fabulous dishes and brought them to share. What a fabulous time we had trying multiple dishes sharing our likes and dislikes.  Check out today's "menu".
  

I hope you have enjoyed this "unit" and hopefully you can find ways to break away from your textbook and take your students in a wonderful adventure!

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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Por y Para

Cabin fever anyone?

We have had some seriously cold days here in the midwest, which have kept me home! On these days, our school does online teaching days. The challenge is creating work that my students can do on their own. So I try to give them something simple that will get them to practice what we have been doing in class. This way, next time we see each other we can pick up where we left off.

Por and para was one of those topics I needed them to practice without me being there to facilitate examples.

I decided that they needed help organizing their notes, so here is a simple handout where they can start thinking of different scenarios in which to use por or para.  You can download them HERE


           

I have also found out that my students enjoy task cards that they can use to start conversations with others or that make them walk around the room seeking examples. Therefore, I gather many of the topics that we have been working with in the classroom and made example task cards! Check them out here.

Or try both of these together in my bundle.

How do you teach por and para in your classrooms?

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No more translating

"What's that word?....  I have on the tip of my tongue!"  As a multilingual, I find myself in that situation often, specially in front of my students. At that moment, I must describe the word I am looking for in order for them to help me figure out what its called.

So if this happens to me, it will surely happen to my students! This is when I was inspired by a popular game where one has to guess what is on the card (placed on one's fore heard) via the descriptions provided by their teammates.

At the time I decided to pilot this activity, my intermediate students where learning about direct and indirect object pronouns. I would love to say that I am textbook free, however my school is simply not there yet. So, what is one to do when teaching this complicated grammar topic to high schoolers while engaging them in the target language? Take them on a trip!

Every student was going to get "ready" to take a trip to an exotic Spanish-speaking country and therefore they had to prepare themselves. We took the vocab from the end of the chapter and in groups started creating detailed descriptions about them.

For example:

La maleta: La haces en tu casa. Lleva tu ropa en las vacaciones. La facturas en el aeropuerto. 

La playa: Puedes nadar en ella y tomar el sol. Tiene arena y puedes relajarte aquí. Está cerca del mar. 

El hotel: Tiene muchas habitaciones. Es donde duermes cuando estás de vacaciones. Tiene muchos huéspedes. 

When all our vocab had unique descriptions made, I created a quizlet to let students practice it at home, and to use it as a warm up activity (side note: my students are obsessed with quizlet live! Try it!)

At this point, the process of creating descriptions became second nature to them so it was time to challenge them with my circumlocution cards. Each one provides them with a prompt to use in their description. 

For example

Lo /la (s) usas para....     

Es necesario ... 

NOW WHAT??? Time to REALLY challenge them. I made copies of the task cards and I made copies of our vocabulary words. In teams, students would select a vocab word and the teammates would use different circumlocution cards to give them hints about the word the student had to guess.

    

This has become one of their preferred warm up activities. The best part is that now that they understand the expectations, I have been able to throw in new vocab and they have rose to the occasion of creating fascinating ways to describe these new terms. 

Give it a try by downloading it HERE. 

If you use it in your classroom, leave me a comment. Tell me how it went. Would you change anything? Add anything?

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¿Verdad o mentira?

Are you telling the truth? or are you telling lies? ... that is the question!

This year, I have many students who are very shy. Sometimes, simple presentations are very intimidating for them, which is why we started playing this game. By calling it a game instead of presentation, students immediately relaxed! In doing so, the quality of their presentations increased and we had a lot more fun. My second hope was that by calling it a game it would spark some friendly competition! AND IT DID =D Since students had to figure out if things said by the presenters were truths or lies, it made them better listeners. Overall I was very pleased with this modification in my classrooms.
It is important to point out that this activity could be used with any proficiency level.
For example, my novice kept it simple. When we were going over ser  and adjectives, their statements were descriptions about themselves. Soy saludable, soy perezoso, soy pelirrojo. My novice-high / intermediate made it a bit more challenging. So while working on the topic of daily routines, they wrote and presented statements like: Me levanto temprano todos los días. Nunca me pongo pantalones cortos. Siempre desayuno rápidamente. 
You get the point!

Download it HERE for free and try it in your classroom. Let me know how it goes.

                                    

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Minute to win it

Inspired by the popular game and accommodating to our testing schedule, 6th grade reviewed some of our "old" topics like colors, vegetables and fruits. 

We organized the class into 3 groups and they wore my new, awesome glasses!!!! 

Our topic flashcards were distributed and the timer was set. Students then had to turn around and say the Spanish name for their teammates´ card. Once we did a couple of rounds of just vocabulary, we made the game harder: each student had to create statements with the vocabulary words they saw. The team who could get through all its players in the least amount of time won. 

It was a lot of fun. It also helped students see where they needed to review more in order to be ready for the new school year. 

Armada

Battleship

The first month of school can be very challenging due to the many scheduling conflicts testing brings. In order to accommodate any last minute plans, I decided to bring different games that would help students review our "old" material and get back to the swing of things. 

In order to multitask, we played Battleship, o Armada in Spanish. This game required students to review their fruits, vegetables, colors, creating questions as well as descriptive sentence structure. 

Students had 3 different "boats" to set up and learned the terms for "hit", "sunk", and "miss" to aid their game. 

It was a lot of fun, and as usual, their competitive spirits came out. Lots of fun and now we were up to date and ready for new material to come our way!!!

Comecocos

Paper fortune tellers? Cootie catchers?
In Spanish, we call them Comecocos (coconut eaters), and 4th grade created their own in order to practice orally their interviewing skills. This project helped us put together various topics we had been working with for several months. It was a great review game as well as a great game to get us talking more in Spanish!
They asked each other questions like 
1. ¿Cómo te llamas? (what is your name?)
2. ¿Cómo estás? (how are you?)
3. ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? (what is your favorite color?)
4. ¿Cuál es tu fruta favorita? (What is your favorite food?)
5. ¿Cuántos años tienes? (how old are you?)

DOWNLOAD MY COMECOCOS HERE

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