This jamboard activity is similar to my virtual paper dolls, but is focused on household furniture and prepositions of place. I use it as a review of prepositions of place and furniture vocabulary with my Spanish 3 students. I focused on the basic furniture from their vocabulary list and made all the furniture available on every frame. However, you could make separate jamboards just focusing on the bedroom, living room, kitchen, etc. Although I recommend you use .png images so the images don’t have a background. I wanted my students to choose from all the available vocabulary which is why I put it all together. There is also a…
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Online Student Support Documents
I never thought I would teach fully online Spanish classes, but then a friend connected me with an online education company and my school district needed online teachers. Both programs come with pre-made curriculums, so my role is to grade and provide feedback and support. The self-paced independence that comes with fully online learning is so great for certain students, but it can be hard to get them to actually engage with the language and culture. So I’ve considered it my goal to get them using the language as much as I can. This has meant that I’ve made adjustments to the programs I use, I rearranged materials so I…
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Jamboard and the Present Progressive
I’ve always enjoyed teaching the present progressive to my students because it comes as a breath of fresh air after focusing on the preterite and imperfect. I never spend a lot of time on it because it is more rarely used, but the unit is always a nice break from the complications of other verb tenses. During in-person instruction, I love to practice the tense by using fun, crazy pictures. Students get super creative when building their sentences and it is a great way to review verbs. My students always enjoy searching out the strangest things happening in the pictures and feel accomplished after describing them. This year though, I…
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Day of the Dead Activities
Day of the Dead is almost here! Especially since the movie Coco my students are more excited than ever to learn about this holiday. I use the following activities as an introduction to Day of Dead in my Spanish 1 classes. My first goal is to make it abundantly clear to my students that Day of the Dead and Halloween are not the same thing, even though they are celebrated so close together. I want them to learn basic information about the holiday and then connect what they’ve learned to their own lives. I love that I can set these up as an assignment in Google and then have my…
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Discover Puerto Rico
We are nearing the anniversary of Hurricane María again this week and because many of my students are old enough to remember it, I like to spend some class time talking about Puerto Rico. Last summer, Puerto Rico came out with an 8 mini-episode series called Discover Puerto Rico with Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is great to use with students. The series is hosted by Lin-Manuel Miranda and each 3-5 minute clip highlights a different aspect of life in Puerto Rico. While the goal was to draw tourists back to the island after Hurricane María, it really is a celebration of life on the island. While most of the episodes are…
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Ready-made Culture Video Activities
As I plan for the upcoming year, it is more important than ever for me to have ready-made sub plans. My district is going to all virtual learning to start the year, but all the details haven’t been hashed out yet and we could change to blended or in person instruction beginning second quarter. Taking those things into account, I want to be prepared in case I’m not able to teach my classes, or at least as prepared as I can be, which is where my ready-made culture videos come in! My first few years teaching, I used a variety of hand me down travel DVDs about Spain and Latin…
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Remote Instruction so far
6 weeks into remote instruction and I feel like I have hit a bit of a wall. This week saw the steepest drop off in students participation yet and my students seem to have hit their limit. I’m sure they feel a bit like me, the days have all run together and even though there’s supposed to be extra time in the day now since we can’t go out, I go to sleep at night thinking “Where did the day go?”. On top of that, I work in a low-income school, so there are so many other factors influencing my students’ lives that make it difficult to concentrate on online…
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Doki Descubre Videos
I am constantly on the lookout for authentic videos I can use with my students. As every world language teacher knows, there is a delicate balance to finding the perfect authentic resource that is both engaging AND understandable to students. I know I am not alone in saying I have spent hours and hours searching for the perfect authentic resource. One of my go-to video resources is the Discovery Kids series, Doki Descubre. They are short 1 minute videos centered on a dog named Doki, who teaches young kids about healthy lifestyle choices. Doki has become a staple of my Spanish 1 course and the students often ask for more…
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Extr@ and Edpuzzle
When I was in high school, the series Extr@ had just come out and I have vivid memories of watching it in both my French and Spanish classes. My classmates and I loved it, so much so in fact, that Sam even made it onto our French Club t-shirts! Now, over 15 years later, my colleague and I watch Extr@ every spring with our Spanish 2 students. Honestly, every year I get a little nervous and think “This will be the year when kids don’t like the show anymore,” but every year I know I was wrong when I hear them laughing and talking about the characters and story. Yes,…
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Preparing for Online Instruction
Like countless teachers around the world, my district is moving to online instruction this week due to Covid-19. Our schools have already been closed for 2 weeks, but our goal is to ease into online instruction and do the best we can. Each week I will be creating a couple 20 minute lessons my students will do independently and then be available for daily office hours. During this time of social distancing I have spent a lot of time brainstorming different activities my students can do at home and reflecting on what the most essential parts of my curriculum are. I don’t know if I’ll see my students again in…