Calendar Time in the Elementary Spanish Classroom Part Two

In a previous post I wrote about setting up a calendar area. Once you've got your calendar area set up then you can start putting it to good use.

Decide when and how long you will do calendar time. 

A lot of this will be based on how much time you have. My classes are only 25 min and our full calendar routine can take up to 7-10 minutes.

During a unit where one of the elements is part of calendar time then we take the time and do it every class or every other class. When it is not part of our unit of study then we do it only once a month (so that students don't forget the different elements.)

If you have 50-60 minute classes then you might consider doing calendar time every class period.

Decide what your routine will look and sound like.

I love teaching with music. I introduce the following songs one at a time as we build up our calendar routine. Once the students have learned the song I stop showing the video and we sing a cappella.

We go over the days of the week using this song from Basho and Friends. We dance the macarena as we sing. Then we do Hoy es... Mañana será... Ayer fue...

I use Calico Spanish's song Meses del Año to practice the months. Then we talk about what month it is and count up to the date.



We don't sing a seasons song during our calendar time but I did use these videos from Calico Spanish and Basho and Friends to introduce the vocabulary. Once they knew it, I just ask students what season we are in.





We sing this song from Super Simple Spanish to practice the weather. Then students talk with a partner about what the weather is that day. After a few seconds I look it up on my phone (I'm in a windowless room!) I call on a few students, and then we move the area on our weather chart to the weather of the day. Most days we also guess the weather in Mexico and another Spanish speaking country (usually in the southern hemisphere so students start to understand that the seasons are opposite there.)



Then we dress the weather bear. Like with the seasons we don't sing the song once students know the vocabulary but Calico Spanish has a great one to introduce clothing. I like it because it also has the seasons. I usually give students an either/or choice and they tell me what I should put on the bear.

You can get your copy of the weather bear and his clothes in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. In addition to using it during calendar time you can also print them out as paper dolls. Or laminate and put magnets on them and have students play with it on cookie sheets.

Keep your students engaged and accountable.

My goal for the last part of this year is to implement calendar pages with students. My students already love calendar time but this will help those students whose attentions wander and get in some writing practice. My plan is to put them in sheet protectors so they can be used over and over. The first graders will use the simpler one below and I have another one with months and seasons for 2nd graders. You can get your copy here - it's included in my Weather Bear Activity Pack!  For an assessment I'm thinking I'll make smaller paper copies and have students fill them out and turn them in every once in awhile to track students' progress.

So that's my calendar time. It's a work in progress and after I finish my second grade benchmark testing I will probably make more changes based on what my kiddos need spiraled more. How do you do calendar time? What are your favorite songs or routines to use during calendar time? Share in the comments below!

Calendar Time in the Elementary Spanish Classroom Part One

Calendar time is a natural thing to do in the elementary World Language classroom. Students are used to doing it in their regular classroom and it's an opportunity to introduce and practice content - math, science, and even geography. I got the chance to observe some of the regular classroom teachers and even some Dual Language Immersion teachers to see how they do calendar and I've copied what I liked, adjusted what I needed to, and now my kiddos love calendar time. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Set up your calendar area.

Have a calendar area that all students can see. Consider what you want to go over. I have the calendar with months on the side so students can access them when they need to. There is also a weather chart, a seasons poster, numbers to practice the temperature and a weather bear that we dress based on the weather.

I also have other language students need - Sentence starters above from Miss Maestra on TpT, a ¿Cómo estás? poster, hands with right and left, and even some adjectives we often use in class. I also have a growing group of stuffed animals that we greet with Hola and Adios every day in kindergarten (It's amazing how much better they know their animals this year doing this!)

I got my calendar set from the local Teacher Parent Store but here is a link to it on Amazon. Here is another cute one as well.

The weather bear is magnetic and I wasn't sure how I would move it from the white board to the bulletin board but my student teacher had the great idea of using command strips on a cookie sheet. Her clothes are kept in a bucket on the bookshelf and we can easily dress her based on the weather.

My seasons poster came from my Scholastic Let's Find Out subscription. I highly recommend Let's Find Out for any Spanish FLES classroom. I've gotten so many good resources from it! If you need seasons cards/posters you can get them in my TpT store.  Also included are weather cards, clothing cards, student calendar pages, and a weather bear to dress.

Other ideas -

1. Clocks to practice time. You could have multiple clocks to show what time it is in other countries. 2. Multiple weather charts to show the weather around the world. (We usually talk about other places but only post Lexington on our chart.)
3. Shapes or colors on the days of the calendar that make a pattern. The teacher turns over the day  but before she dose students must predict the next part of the pattern.
4. Number of days in school. Deconstruct the numbers by 100, 10s and 1s.
5. Number of the day. For younger students you could use a 10 frame. Or you can have one more, one less, 10 more, 10 less.

A calendar bulletin board in an immersion kindergarten classroom

So that's my calendar area. What does yours look like? What elements do you have? In my next post I'll talk about how I introduce the vocabulary and what our actual routine looks and sounds like.