Month: May 2022

Review Materials – Make them Interactive!

As I posted this week, I am creating lots of materials to help my students review for the required vocabulary and grammar in the school where I teach. I do not teach these out of context throughout the year, but we do have common semester assessments, so I want them to feel prepared. I believe strongly in the use of comprehensible input for true language acquisition, so this is quite a deviation from the way I generally teach.

That being said, I wanted to review but keep it fun, interactive and comprehensible. So, I came up with a method I explained in an earlier post HERE. I have taken all the required vocabulary and started to create some interactive activities we can do together or in small groups. Here is one I created to review zoo animals and prepositions of place. I was able to watch students use vocabulary, listen to instructions and demonstrate an understanding of animals and prepositions of place.

This can also be used with younger students to teach the vocabulary and have them practicing the vocabulary in an interactive way. You could certainly print the zoo page and the animals stickers and have students do this in class without the use of computers as well.

Here is the place to move and label the animals.

Here are some of the stickers I used.

Hope this inspires you to get them talking and working together! I will have this and other sets of common vocabulary units up for sale on my TpT store, but you could certainly just use notecards with simple drawings or pics you print. The key is to sail on into the summer with low stress and high engagement!

Happy Teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!

Need Maps? – Spanish Class Edition

I am starting to prep for reviewing my students for the required curriculum in my district. One of the things they require is for students to know the location (and I taught capitals) of all the Spanish-speaking countries. So…

Here are a few for you to have!

Yes, I realize that México is not part of “Central America,” but this is the way I had to teach it for curriculum in my district. Below, you will find another.

Since Central America is not a continent, you could also use the one below if you prefer.

Hope they help make an easy addition to your final reviews if this is part of your content! I also added this to Schoology as a “Drag and Drop” assessment and it was a hit!

I have my students glue these into their interactive notebooks, and we work on them throughout the year. They color in the country and label it as we learn about that country. I generally do Central America in the fall and South America and the others in the spring. This, again, is because it is expected in our district.

Hope having these helps you not to have to create another map.

Happy Teaching!

Alana

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Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!

Help students learn about the world AND buy YOURSELF a few days of sanity…

May… that super fun time of year when state testing, end of year behavior and teacher burnout start to really create a perfect storm.

So, for me, it is project time! I have several end of year projects I use from time to time. This year, I recycled a travel project that has really been getting my students talking. They are realizing there is a HUGE world out there, waiting for them to explore it AND they are learning all that goes into planning a trip.

You could have people work in pairs or groups, but at this time of year, I prefer to let them work alone. I did allow my students to research in English. My upper levels and Heritage Speaker classes presented in Spanish, but I allowed my lower level students to choose. I loved hearing their banter about the things they were discovering about travel and faraway places.

You can certainly use just a Google slideshow to have them do the project, or you could even take screenshots of the pics here and use them. The full project with all 14 slides can be found HERE for sale on my TpT store in English or in Spanish if you just want it already done :-).

It was fun, engaging and they learned and problem-solved a LOT! Win-win.

I hope this helps with some ideas for teaching about travel while keeping students focused!

Happy Teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!