Month: November 2021

An Easy Holiday Description Review

It is that time of year when the students are getting antsy, and… SO ARE WE!!! So, why not fill these times with some easy activities that keep them engaged and learning and keep YOU sane!

I created this quick little activity to allow students to review talking about physical descriptions, personality traits, likes and dislikes and basic feelings and emotions.

Most of the characters used in the slideshow HERE are very familiar to most kids, but, if they don’t know these characters, you can give them the name or the movie/show they come from and let them Google away!

Hope this helps! Follow me here to keep getting the free things I put out. I try to make a post about once a week.

Happy Teaching!

Follow this blog for more great, free resources! Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!

Personalized Learning – an easy option

Choice boards are always popular with everyone. They provide personalized learning pathways for students, choice in learning and also give teachers a way to assess the learning progress of their students!

Here is an example of a choice board I made in about 15 minutes using the template I created. This one is filled with independent, online activities students can do when they finish early or need some extra practice at home!

HERE is the template you can use any time to add in your own “choices” for students. You can learn how to create a link by following the instructions in THIS LOOM.

I will be using this a lot during this time of year as I do assessments and review with small groups before semester exams. It is also a great to use for independent study and even as a test review.

Happy teaching!

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An oldie, but a goodie…

Sometimes, getting back to some basics is good. In my school, we have common required vocabulary. As I have stated before, I am not a proponent of vocabulary lists, but sometimes you do not have a choice. So, the best thing for me is to find some fun, active way to work with the required vocabulary. So, reaching back into my teacher bag of tricks, I came out with this classic…”I have… Who has…”

I did it this week with my students with clothing and colors. I even made it into a good, old-fashioned class competition to see how fast each class could do it. They got SOOOOO into this! It seems hard this year to know what is going to work to motivate students to be engaged, so I find myself often going back to some more traditional (pre-tech) kinds of activities.

Anyway, I made template of the basic cards in Canva in ENGLISH and then in SPANISH. I am also including the template for clothing and colors HERE.

Hope this helps! Happy teaching!!

Follow this blog for more great, free resources! Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!

Getting My Students Moving and Learning!

Sometimes we just need to get the kids up and moving. This week was one of those weeks for me. I am not sure about you all, but this is generally a super LONG stretch of school. This year, even more than in years past, kids are restless.

So, what did I do this week? I did my own version of a running dictation. I have seen this from lots of amazing teachers, so it isn’t an original idea or anything, but it is something that I have cobbled together AND works for all levels I teach.

Teacher Prep:

  1. Find a short story (or write one based on shared writing or something you have done in class) at the level of your class. Print it out and cut it into sentences. For upper levels, you may have 3-4 sentences per piece. For lower levels, you may have just 1-2 sentences per piece. Make sure you have two more pieces than groups. So, if you have 6 groups, you need 8 pieces. (If it is available, you can print it out on a different color paper for every group you have. I do this with my rowdy classes so they think that everyone has a different story and don’t try to share with friends. I teach middle school currently, so sometimes this is needed.)
  2. Draw out cartoon boxes to match the number of pieces of the story you have. If your story has 8 pieces, you draw 8 cartoon boxes. If you have 10 pieces to the story, you need 10 boxes. Number them. Make two copies per group.
  3. Cut the pieces of the story and tape them up in the hallway. Do not number them. Do not put them up in order.

In class:

  1. Put kids in groups of 3-4 (depending on class size).
  2. Explain the jobs. The scribe is obviously writing, the motivator roots on the team and makes sure they are all doing their part, the messenger is going to the story pieces and the illustrator is drawing. ** If you have groups of 3, the motivator position can be shared by the illustrator and scribe.
  3. Explain the goal is for one student to go into the hallway and find a paper and read it. They must come back and tell the scribe IN the class language. It may take several trips to the paper in the hallway. That is okay.
  4. Then, the illustrator must illustrate the sentence (s).
  5. Once that has happened, everyone rotates roles and students continue in this fashion until they have filled in every box.
  6. Finally, they work together to put the story in the order they believe it should go on the second piece of paper and create a final copy.
  7. When this is done, they can turn it in to be graded or, if time permits, they can check and go back to fix it after feedback

This can be a 1-2 day activity, depending on the level of your students. Hope this gets everyone up and moving…and gives you a day or two of rest while they get lots of input and practice!

Happy teaching!

Follow this blog for more great, free resources! Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!