Hola all! It's been awhile since I've shared on my blog. Like many of you all, I spent the last 4 months of the 2019-2020 school year as an online Spanish teacher. While we'd all prefer a "normal" back to school this year, chances are we may be thrown into the requirement to give live, synchronous classes to our students at some point this school year. I wanted to give a quick overview of how I structure my 45-60 min Middle and High School online Spanish classes in hopes that you may be able to pick up a tip or two to help you out this school year! For context, my school used Google Meet™, but the same structure should work across various live platforms. Online Spanish classes definitely don't come naturally to most of us, but I found that implementing a routine made it easier on my students (and myself!) in the middle of a difficult time. Here's an overview of what you may typically see in my live online Spanish lessons. :)
- Start with a Para Empezar. Just like in the regular classroom, I always began with a warm up question that was projected when students entered the session. In our live sessions, my warm up question was always something that students were required to answer orally and rather quickly. I started at random points each session on my class roll and also used this question as an attendance tracker. This allowed me to hear every student speak right at the beginning of class and forced immediate engagement in Spanish. ;)
- Review the Plan del Día. Next, we ran through an overview Slide of our session together so that students would know the topics and what to expect.
- Review Asynchronous Assignment. We alternated between synchronous and asynchronous days, so in our live sessions I would make sure to answer questions and do a quick review of what students had completed independently.
- Cover New Concepts. In this part of the lesson I would introduce new material. This may be a presentation using Pear Deck, a reading together with discussion or watching video together.
- Assign Independent Work. This is when students would have some time to work on an assignment. The assignment may be Digital Task Cards, a Digital Interactive Notebook, EdPuzzle, etc. During this time, I would remain in the Meet session with myself muted, so students could work without distractions. This allowed me to be available though whenever they had a question.
- Wrap up/Review/Game. About 5-10 minutes before the end of classes we regrouped for a wrap up and review of the lesson. I then gave instructions on anything that needed to be completed before the next lesson. If time allowed, we ended class with a Gimkit (by far my student's preferred choice of game!).
While this is a basic overview, I hope it allows your mind to get a framework for an online lesson flow that may work for you this year!
