La Casa Centers- Ideas for Spanish Class

My third graders are in the middle of our Me and My Home unit, learning the rooms of the house. We started by looking at houses around the world and read The Three Little Pigs. But because I´m back in the Specials rotation this year we didn't have enough time to do the Tres Cerditos STEAM challenge - read more about that here.

Instead we moved onto to the inside of the house with rooms. I introduced the rooms of the house by telling the story of Cenicienta (Cinderella.) Cenicienta has to clean ALL the rooms of the house so it's great for lots of repetitions. This is also where I start introducing adjectives that they'll need next year - rich, intelligent, handsome, nice, mean, strong etc. It's not a focus but it helps that they've heard and seen them before when they get to fourth grade.

We also warmed up each class by playing ¿Dónde está abuela? where one person puts abuelita somewhere in the house and the other person guesses. I changed this up to different family members for a nice review of family vocabulary.

Then we moved onto centers.

Center 1 - Gapminder.com

I LOVE this center. Mostly because I love this website. It features houses from around the world. Students got a worksheet with different items in the house. They had to find the picture of the item and then write what room in the house it went in.

Get your free worksheet here!

Center 2 - Magnetic houses

I won these sets of magnetic houses three years ago at the NNELL breakfast at ACTFL. Students take turns asking each other ¿Dónde está? with the furniture and their partner answers with the room. The first time I tell them to make una casa normal. The second time they can make una casa loca with the bathtub in the living room for example.

I photocopied the back cover so if kids wanted to they could actually practice the furniture vocabulary as well as the rooms of the house. If they didn't then they just ignored the paper. Instant differentiation!

Center 3 - Reading center

Because we started with Los Tres Cerditos and Cenicienta I have students read our Tres Cerditos books and our Cenicienta Readers Theater in groups of 2-4. At the end of Cenicienta there was a survey that asks who in their family cleans the different rooms of the house.

Get your copy of Cenicienta here. 

Center 4 - Cut and paste

I put out these cute houses from Fun For Spanish Teachers. Students cut out and pasted the labels. When they were done I had a bucket of books in Spanish on houses that they could look at. Later they cut these out and put them in their notebooks.

This unit is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Students really love talking about their own homes and looking at homes around the world. What activities do you use to teach about the house? Share in the comments below!

Groceries Around the World - Food Unit for Spanish Class

I recently sat in a presentation by ACTFL Past President Jacque Van Houten on the Can Do Statements for Intercultural Competence. One of the things I really like about the new Can Do statements are the inclusion of the phrase "in my own and other cultures." It really facilitates students looking at their own culture - even realizing that they have a culture. It puts culture as global instead of "other."

I also went to a great session by Matt Coss at SCOLT on teaching authentic culture. One of my main take aways from this session was that instead of making blanket stereotypical statements like, "People eat tacos in Mexico" we should turn it into questions like "Do people in Mexico eat tacos?" From there you can ask more and more probing questions. "Where and when do people eat tacos?" "What do people put on tacos?" "Where can I find the best tacos?"

All of this great PD has been bouncing around in my brain and I'm starting to make adjustments to units I am already teaching. One of those is the my supermarket unit in kindergarten. Read that post here. It was one of my favorite units last year but there is definitely some room for improvement in terms of interculturality.

For this particular unit that means asking "Where do people buy food?"  Al restaurante, al mercado, y al supermercado. Like last year we'll make a list together of the places my students buy their food. Then we'll look at some places around the world. That fits perfectly with the Can Do statement of Investigate - In my own and other cultures I can identify where people buy food."*

We'll also read Peppa Va al Supermercado and make our lists like last year but it also means asking "What do people like to eat?" and "What food do people buy?" I made mercado, supermercado, and restaurante posters as well as ¿Qué te gusta comer? posters that include some photos from my local Mexican grocery Aguascalientes. You can get your free set here.

These are pictures I took at our local Mexican grocery store

But more than just showing WHERE people buy food, I want to show students WHAT foods people buy. This is where photographer Peter Menzel comes in with his awesome What the World Eats photos. His photo series is a treasure trove! You can click on different galleries by continent and then by country.

Each country has the groceries for a week image but then even more - where they bought the food, their kitchens, tables set for dinner, etc. I plan on showing these different images and we can compare and contrast where we buy our own food. This site is seriously amazing! You can also get his book What the World Eats on Amazon here.

I printed a few pictures and made a bulletin board. The white cards are our food vocabulary that students can look for in the photos. I've already seen and heard some very interested students in the hallway!

Like last year at the end of the unit, if there's time, we will play el mercado. Students will write their own grocery lists and go shopping for those items. This activity was one of their favorites last year. One kid told me he was, "so excited I can't sleep!" and it fits perfectly with the Interact Can Do, "I can act appropriately when  grocery shopping."* You can get worksheets, food cards, extension activities, and grocery role play activity set here. 

So those are my updates to my food unit. How do you teach food in your classroom? Have you used How the World Eats with your students? Share in the comments below!

*Both of these are pulled from the ACTFL Can Do statements and simplified for kindergarten.