Years ago I used to do a doctor roleplay with my third graders and it was super fun. But then our district gave us a unit framework and that vocabulary was moved down to kindergarten and I just couldn't make it work in the same way. So I was super excited to have the freedom to do kind of whatever I wanted with my sixth graders this past year. The doctor roleplay was back! And it got an upgrade because I saw my students every day!
Side note - Every student at my school takes a quarter each of Spanish, French, and Chinese the first three quarters and then fourth quarter they choose which one they want to continue on with through the rest of middle school.
In the first quarter I had them we learned basics like greetings, introductions, birthdays, where we lived, feelings, and numbers. More on that later because I also really like that unit! We started with a review since I hadn't seen some of them in months. But also because we would be using most of it in our roleplay later.
First up we learned body parts and we learned the alphabet so that we could spell our names.
We learned how to use the verb doler and practiced with a card game called Hola Doctor. I love to use this game with all kinds of vocab but in this case I had a ton of Me duele + body part cards and 1 or 2 Hola doctor cards. The students pass out all the cards and hold them face down (like in War.) They take turns asking ¿Qué te duele? The other player flips over their top card, read what hurts, and places it in the middle. They continue to ask and answer until someone flips over the Hola doctor card. When the doctor card is flipped the other player has to take ALL the cards in the middle pile. The person who gets rid of all their cards first is the winner.
I also used the same cards to play Quiz Quiz Trade. Students found a partner and asked them ¿Qué te duele? and then answered what was on their card. Then they switched. I walked around and encouraged them to act out what hurts and/or point to that body part. Needless to say I have several Oscar nominees amongst my sixth graders.
After we learned the Sana, sana colita de rana rhyme I added in the Hola doctor card into the Quiz Quiz Trade. If your partner had that card they would recite the rhyme over your hurt body part before they traded cards. That also was pretty hilarious. The Canticos song below was also a huge hit.
We also watched Mi Burro Enfermo Está and practiced different vocabulary for remedies. Again we played Quiz Quiz Trade.
Students then filled out a doctor visit dialogue and practiced in lines. One line stayed still while one shifted every time I rang the bell so they got to practice with multipe people. When I felt that they were ready we finally got out the doctor toys and took turns being sick, checking people in, and of course being doctors!
Students had to check in at the front of the room with a receptionist. Then they sat in the middle rows until a doctor was free. Our doctors sat in the back row and assessed the patients. When students were done they went back for a second, third, and sometimes a fourth opinion.
To make it work I waited until I knew the majority of students could handle the language they needed to do the roleplay. They also got to keep their notebooks on them and refer to them as needed. I also reminded them that if they were not speaking Spanish they would have to sit out. We never played more than 10 minutes or so because I didn't want them to get bored or slip into English. And it worked! We played over the course of a week so everyone had a turn to do each role and on my end of the year surveys most kids wrote they wished we had played more. Classroom management tip - always leave them wanting more!
Grab the worksheets and flashcards I used in this unit in my TPT store by clicking the picture below!
Between testing, Chromebook collection, and the general unwillingness of middle school students to do anything at the end of the year I knew I needed a good project to see us through to the last day. I decided a quick mini unit on alebrijes would be perfect.
First we learned what alebrijes are with a few videos spread over several class periods. The longer one does a good job of explaining the difference between cartonería y copal alebrijes.
Then we practiced saying what our favorite animals were and describing them.
We spun a wheel and drew two animals together on our whiteboards as practice for later. Click the picture to take you to the wheel.
And we played Lotería. Click the picture for the link.
We also read a short reading and designed our own alebrijes from this website. (p. 3 & 11 but there's more great activities if you have the time!)
Finally it was time to make our versions! We weren't doing paper mache BUT with some ideas from this website and this video I figured out how we could make them 3D and give the kids a way to be creative. Here are my two examples I made.
And here are what my students made! I had them open them up and write a short description on the inside in Spanish so we got to practice both language and culture as we finished up the year.
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.
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.
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!)
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
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.
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!
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