Three Things I'm Loving in My Classroom Right Now

 I survived my first Valentine's Day in middle school! There was a lot of ccandy, a lot of presents, and a lot of drama but we made it through. Here are some things I'm loving right now!

💖 Interchangeable mini anchor charts

I only have so much room on my walls and I didn't have a good spot for my numbers this year so I made a desk mat instead. But I also wanted some interpersonal phrases that students could use to liven up their conversations. First quarter I had both taped down but they ended up so gross that I had to scrap that by October. Instead I used velcro and I can change them based on what we're doing in class that day. I'm currently working on making one for present tense verb endings. 

Want to make your own? I make them in Powerpoint but Google slides would also work. Resize under design or Page Setup to 8.5 x 11 and then insert a small square about 1/3 of the page. Put in any images and text you want. Then print, laminate and add a velcro dot. 

Fun Family Project for Spanish class!

 Are you looking for something beyond a family tree for your familia unit? How about a children's book? There are LOTS of real world examples you can look at before AND it's a perfect authentic task. 

Check out my last post to see which books (hello authentic resources!) I used with students before we created our own. They also had lots of practice with personality and physical descriptions during this unit.

This project was a summative assessment grade. I didn't want them using translators or AI so I gave them a paper graphic organizer for their children's books that they filled out in class, Chromebooks closed. This gave me a good idea of what they could really do with the language and it prevented me from giving them a grade based on how pretty they made their children's book. This is a language class, not a design class, so even though some students made some amazing looking books they might have only gotten a B based on their language. We are an IB school so I used an IB MYP Language Acquisition rubric but any proficiency based rubric would work for this project. 

Getting started teaching la familia in Spanish class

One of the benefits of moving from elementary to middle school is time. I have so MUCH time! And with that time we can do so much more. In elementary school I could only get to immediate family and maybe abuelo and abuela, but not much more. In middle school we have ALL the family PLUS how to describe them. Here are some activities that I used with 8th graders. 

Introducing the vocabulary

I started with the same story I used in elementary school - ¿Quién comió mi dona? Someone has eaten my donut and I interview every family member to figure out who. There was a commercial awhile back ¿Quién tomño el jugo? that was very similar and gave me the idea but now I can't find the video. If you have it, please share!

Once we finished I hid a donut behind different family members and they had to guess who had it. Then they played in pairs using Pear Deck. I gave them the interactive slide and they moved a draggable taco to a family member and a partner guessed. You could also do this with paper and a file folder. 

They also practiced with Flippity flashcards and Blooket.  And they loved this old school song (well some of them rolled their eyes but they also were sad when I didn't play it - so middle school!)

Authentic resources for your school unit!

The transition to middle school has not been easy but I'm back with some great authentic resources that would work for any novice learner from 3rd grade on up. 

First up is the chain of private schools in Chile. Each school has a virtual tour and a fantastic Información Práctica page that includes school supply lists, schedules, lunch menus, and uniforms. I actually had my 7th graders look at these and then create their own Información Práctica page for our school in Spanish as their final project for this unit. 

These tours were great for learning places in school

These schedules were great for practicing subjects, time, and comparing & contrasting

This Instagram page for a school in Colombia has some great posts - there are students talking about their favorite subject and one that would be great for adjectives. 

New school - new look

 Every winter for the last 12 years there have been discussions about ending the district support for our elementary World Language programs and for 11 of those years they decided to keep us around. Mostly because it was usually too late in the year to start thinking of how to restructure things to make it more fair (not every elementary school had a district funded World Language teacher.) 

Every year until this year. This year they finally decided that it would make more fiscal sense to allocate our positions to the middle schools. 

From a district standpoint I 100% understand the decision. It hasn't been fair to over half the schools that don't have a World Language program and this will allow them to get more "bang for their buck." 

From a personal standpoint it has been incredibly hard. I have loved working at my school and the little kids. I'm more than a little nervous about moving up to middle school. 

The good news is I'm going to an IB school where World Language is highly valued! I won't be a lone ranger anymore - I'll be part of a departement of 6! I already have friends who work there! 

If you have followed me for elementary lessons and ideas - thank you! I hope you continue to read along as I adjust to middle school. I suspect (hope really) that many of my elementary ideas will also work with older students. And if you teach middle school - please send me good thoughts and any advice you might have!

Using Beebots in Spanish Class

 My third graders last year learned about places in the community and how to give directions around town - so the perfect excuse to borrow the beebots from the STEM Lab!

We started with learning places in the community with the game ¿Dónde está mi perro? I told the class my dog had escaped and we needed to find her. They had to guess where in the city she had ended up. It's a great low prep way to practice lists of vocabulary over and over. 

We then practiced our direction words as a whole group and then in pairs using worksheets and tiny chancla erasers a second grade teacher loaned me. 

Next up, the students practiced with the virtual beebots. I would tell them where I wanted to go and they had to give directions in Spanish and program their beebot to get there. This time really allowed them to experiment and see how the beebot responded. It also helped that they had played with the beebots in English with the STEM lab teacher!

Finally it was time to play with the beebots! First we sat in a circle and just used one map and one beebot. Everyone wrote their directions and I picked one student to program the beebot. If they didn't make it, then we troubleshooted as a group to debug the code. 

The next class the students worked in groups of four. Like in whole group, everyone wrote their directions and I rotated who got to program the beebot so that everyone got a turn. Having lots of visuals and a set order of who did what really helped mitigate any arguments (though we did have couple.) 

The map I use is no longer available but here is a link to the same site I got it from originally. 

After finishing up with the beebots we have moved on to designing our own communities and drawing maps to put in our interactive notebooks. But more on that later!

Have you used beebots or coding in your room before? Share in the comments below!

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Amate Bark Paintings in Spanish class

First grade recently finished our Animals Around Us unit, culminating in students creating an Amate bark painting inspired artwork! 

In this unit students learned how to say which animals they liked as well as to describe their size, color, speed, and how they move. I will do a separate post where I share what I used for the bulk of the unit - introducing animal names, practicing movements, looking at zoo maps and webcams, etc. In this post though I want to share how we compared and contrasted amate bark paintings and alebrijes from Mexico and then made our own amate inspired artwork.

We watched these videos to learn more about how alebrijes and amate paintings are made. 

         

I also have an amate painting and some mini alebrijes that I purchased online that students could see in person. We also looked at several photos from the internet as well. 

Because this wasn't the main focus of each class period, it did take us awhile to get done. We spent the last 10 minutes of class each time, working on something related to our artwork. First, I had students practice drawing their animals on whiteboards first. I bought drawing guides for zoo animals off TPT and projected them onto the board for them to follow. I modeled and gave directions in Spanish. After one class of practicing, I gave them their paper and we drew with pencil. 

The third class period they went over their pencil with sharpie markers. I can't JUST have them doing art and chatting in English so while they were working, I asked questions in Spanish about which animals were big or small, which animals walk or swim, etc. What animals did they like? 

The last two classes we used kwik sticks borrowed from the art room to paint. Students had to come up and tell me in Spanish which color they were taking. 

Some things for the future:

-Drawing first on the white boards really helped my first grade students practice with the drawing guides and how to follow the step by step pictures. This is a skill not all 6-7 year olds know how to do so it was an important step. 

-The kwik paint sticks were great for clean up in the Spanish room but they are kind of hard for this age to use well. I might use construction paper crayons or send them to art class to paint with real paint and paintbrushes next year. Or oil pastels. 

-There are a TON of resources and activity ideas on Pinterest. Some have students crumple their paper or tear the edges to give it more of a homemade paper look. One blog I read mentioned touching up the sharpie and adding dots and other lines as small details later, which I think I might incorporate next year, especially if I coordinate with the art teacher to have them work on them some in her room.

Do you incorporate art in your Spanish classroom? Share in the comments below and don't forget to check out my other art-inspired posts!

Joan Miro in kindergarten

Arpilleras and Animal Habitats

Picasso Portraits

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