Structuring LIVE, Synchronous Online Spanish Lessons

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!

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Spanish Interactive Notebooks: 7 Essentials to Get You Started!

If you're giving Spanish interactive notebooks a try for the first time in your Spanish classes, you may be wondering what supplies you will need to be off to a successful start. Here's my detailed photo list of 7 things (plus a bonus FREE download) that you need to get started on your interactive notebook journey! 

**Totally confused about  Spanish interactive notebooks and what they are?? START HERE with this blog post!**

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Tips for Starting Spanish Interactive Notebooks...Part 2

Earlier in the week, I wrote Part 1 of Starting Spanish Interactive Notebooks. You may want to check that out HERE if you haven't already. Today, I wanted to share a few more thoughts that have developed from my use Spanish Interactive Notebooks.

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Tips for Starting Spanish Interactive Notebooks...Part 1

Hi all!! I hope you all have enjoyed your summer as much as I have. Mine was busy, busy, busy and packed full of changes. I'll save all that for another post, but I wanted to publicly address some questions that I've recently received from several readers who are interested in starting Spanish interactive notebooks in their classes this upcoming school year. Thanks guys for inspiring me to jump back on the blog train and share what's worked for me in regards to using Spanish interactive notebooks in my classes. 

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Tired of Traditional Note Taking? Try Flip Books!

Before I decided to take the interactive notebook plunge this school year, I began exploring the idea of spicing of note taking with flip books. I often hear heavy sighing when announcing "Saquen los cuadernos para tomar apuntes", so it's good to change things up every now and then. The idea behind flip books for me is that students are able to create a more meaningful study tool while being more engaged with the learning experience. I have my students add their flip books to their interactive notebooks, but they can just as easily stand alone or be 3 hole punched to add to a binder. I created a template using PowerPoint which I now just edit each time I'm making a new flip book...it involved a bit of trial and error at first with printing, cutting, and stacking the pages, but now I'm good to go when a new idea pops in my head. 

You can pretty much create a flip book for any topic or theme. I like to use my grammar point flip books as a way for students to take notes, practice acquired info, and then use as a study tool when reviewing for an assessment. In the example above, students write in the meaning and conjugations of the given verb during the note taking time, they then write original sentences in Spanish using the verb and illustrate one of the sentences during the classwork practice time. The final page of the book is a conjugation practice page where students conjugate the given verb or choose between 2 verbs and conjugate. It takes the idea of a traditional worksheet and incorporates it into the flip book. This last page works well as a homework assignment. They then use these books to review for quizzes. Here's another example using Reflexive Verbs as the topic.

So, there you have it...an all-in-one note taking, practice and study resource! Do you use flip books in your classrooms? I'd love to hear about it!

For more examples of Spanish Flip Books, click HERE.

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Encouraging Student Creativity with Spanish Interactive Notebooks

Since I began using interactive notebooks at the beginning of the school year, one thing that I have really enjoyed is seeing creativity shine in notebooks of my students. Several times I have created an activity to be used in a specific way in my mind, but, then, my students have managed to make it more interesting than I had anticipated. I love seeing this! Not only are they learning Spanish in a different way, BUT they are really "owning" their learning experiences by making their notebooks unique.

This past week we reviewed school supplies vocabulary. We viewed a PowerPoint with school supplies and students filled in a vocabulary list to add to one side of their notebooks. I had created an interactive notebook activity to go along with the topic. You can check that out in my store, HERE. My idea was for them to cut out and attach an entire pocket with a picture of a mochila to their notebooks and then add the school supplies. Here is what I came up with as an example before.

I decided that I wanted students to draw the school supplies on blank templates and add their pictures, along with the Spanish term, to their mochila pockets. That way, students could review by matching the words with pictures or play a memory game with a partner. I passed out the materials and students got to work. As I circulated back around, I noticed that one student had cut out the picture of just the mochila instead of the pocket. Because I harp on the importance of READING the directions on the templates before beginning to cut, I began to remind the student of this. He had a different plan in mind though, and told me that it would be ok! The result? He cut a slit in the top of his backpack (instead of using the entire pocket), and showed me how he could add all of the school supply inserts and create a more "realistic" mochila for his notebook page. Hmmm...maybe I should just hire my students to make my activities?

The point is that, even though this was a whole class activity, students were able to individualize their own notebook page however worked best for them. I LOVE it! I am inspired by and learn from them daily....for that I am thankful! Have your students taught you anything recently?

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Structuring a 30 min World Language Class...ready, set, go!

As THE Spanish teacher at a small, private school, I teach a wide age range. I'm currently teaching Spanish to grades 2-10. I see my elementary classes for 30 minutes, one day a week. I sometimes feel like I'm spinning my wheels because we spend a lot of time recapping previous material and it often seems that we move at a slow pace with new material. I thought I'd share an example play by play of 30 minutes in one of my elementary Spanish classes!

Min 1-2 Students enter, greet me at the door (Hola, Buenos días, etc) as they pass by to their seats. I have my students keep folders which they leave in my room. I may hand these out now or wait until later in the lesson depending on what we're doing.

Min 3-5 Oral Review Practice: This may be a Q&A ¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo te llamas?, etc. We may do a few quick rounds of "I Spy": "Yo veo algo (insert color)" to review colors or we may count around the room.

Min 6-9 Singing: Songs are a great way to teach and reinforce vocabulary. Calico Spanish Songs on YouTube are elementary geared and can be found in a variety of topics. I project these onto the SmartBoard and students sing along. I generally will choose a song or 2 over a topic we have covered or we may learn a new song to introduce a new topic.

Min 10-15 Direct Instruction: This past week we began going over La Familia vocabulary. I showed a PowerPoint on basic family words with graphics. Student practiced pronouncing the words and filled in a vocabulary sheet as we went through the slides. This sheet gets added to their folders.

Min 16-25 Activity/Game: This week, my lower elementary classes are making La Familia vocabulary books, so they began coloring their templates and adding the correct word to the pictures. My upper elementary classes began a family tree diagram from my Mi Familia de Superhéroes set.

While I created this packet for my secondary students, I've found that, with slight adapting, I can use it with my 4th graders on up. They write the appropriate label on each family member and assign a name to each character. Next class, we'll use the diagrams to do some basic oral practice. ¿Cómo se llama la madre? ¿Cómo se llama la hermana? etc.

Min 26-30 Clean up, collect folders, vocabulary recap, final song, line up, back to class....BREATHE! :) 

Do you have short language classes? I would love to hear how you structure these! 

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4 ways to get your Spanish students back after the holidays! :)

So it's back to school on Monday for me...I'm imagining it is for many of you as well. It seems that something happens to students over these breaks. I'm going to go ahead and predict it now that I will have students who walk in this week who will appear to have forgotten everything about Spanish that they've been taught....EVER! Does this happen to you too? You're in such a groove with a couple of tiresome weeks heading into the winter break, but you feel like your students are making progress and then...WHAT?! I get a blank stare when asking a simple question. Here are 3 things (plus an extra to think about in the future) that I'm doing this week to get my Spanish superstars back! ;)

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5 Spanish Infographics for the holiday season!

I'm always on the lookout for cool infographics to share in my Spanish classes. Infographics are pretty much just like the name implies. They are visual representations of information about a particular topic. I generally find these on Pinterest. We are trying to push through these last 8 days of school before Christmas break and I plan to add in some of the infographics to infuse some target language reading. 

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Vocabulary Pictures Activity Idea

While my amigos y familia in the US celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, I carried on with school as usual. It was a good week though! We've had cooler than usual weather...75 degrees, lol...for the past few days. My mom is visiting from Georgia, so while she's been lounging in tank tops and shorts, I've preferred jeans and cardigans. :)

This week in la clase de español, students used their current vocabulary list (-AR verbs), and created a picture or graphic. The only requirement was that they had to include all of their words somewhere within the picture. Here's one that really represents the island!

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Teaching Tips for the Verb Gustar

Today I wanted to fill you in on how I teach the verb GUSTAR but, first, a real life message. ;) 

I feel like I've reached THAT point. You know the point I'm talking about, right? The one where you're just trying to make it until the next break? For me that next break is Christmas (4 weeks and counting!). I'm sure I'm not alone in my feelings because it seems the same thoughts are shared often in the staff room at break and lunch each day. I think this is combined with the fact that this upcoming week is just a normal week. I'll go to work this Thursday (Thanksgiving) and teach on just like an average day. While it has gotten easier since this is our third Thanksgiving in Grand Cayman, it's still tough because, as an American, Thanksgiving is BIG. It's difficult not to be surrounded by lots of family on this day. We have amazing friends though and still put on a big get together with the traditional meal. This year, our friends that are hosting are even DVRing the Macy's parade, so we can all watch as we eat our Thanksgiving dinner after work on Thursday. :)

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Engaging young language learners

As I've mentioned before, I'm currently teaching at a private school where I teach quite a wide range of classes including several elementary Spanish classes. Even though I did spend my first 2 years out of college teaching elementary school Spanish, I spent the next 7 years teaching high school Spanish. I definitely considered older students to be more in my "comfort" zone if that makes sense?? At my current school I do a bit of switching back and forth between grade levels and now that I am also mom to a 1st grader, I've really enjoyed getting to work with these younger language learners again. In my opinion, one of the cool things about teaching a second language is the ability to use similar ideas across grade levels especially in the beginning levels of language learning. Singing, movement, role playing, basic reading books in the target language, culture crafts, etc. could all fit with a 2nd grade class, as well as a 9th grade class!

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Create an Adjective Person!

This past week we wrapped up a unit on los adjetivos descriptivos. One of the activities that my students enjoyed was creating "Cómo soy yo?" people. I had gotten an idea from Pinterest and then set out to make some templates and adapt it to Spanish. Students had to choose Spanish adjectives which they felt best described them, add them to the body of a "person" and then attach the body parts. Even though we haven't done body parts vocabulary yet, they were then pre-exposed to words like "la cabeza", "los brazos", etc., so this served a dual purpose. They then added color to their people and they are now added to a classroom bulletin board. These also will also fold up well, so we saved a page in our interactive notebooks for them to be added after they are on the bulletin board for awhile. Here are some pictures of this quick mini-project!

The templates for this activity are available in my TpT store Here!

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Teaching el Día de los Muertos

It's coming soon! One holiday that I look forward to teaching about every year is Día de los Muertos. I like helping my students knock out the stereotype that it's just another version of Halloween. Today I was happy to have to opportunity to jump over and guest blog at Language Teachers' Cafe. Here I share some ideas that I've come across online for incorporating Day of the Dead into your lessons at the end of the month. 

I was thinking ahead about the holiday this year and wanted to make some new resources of my own for students to include in their interactive notebooks. While I was busy creating back in July, my 6 year old wanted in on the action too! What was the result? I now have Día de los Muertos Christmas ornaments that I can proudly display in a couple of months...thanks AG! ;)

Head over to Language Teachers' Cafe to see my 5 ways to Celebrate el Día de los Muertos in your classroom.

The Día de los Muertos clip art can be found at PoppyDreamz Digital Art.

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Creatively Teaching Spanish Speaking Countries and Capitals

I often find that for whatever reason I tend to breeze through the topic of Spanish speaking countries and capitals. This year I pre-tested student knowledge of the topic by giving them a blank map and asking them to write in as many Spanish speaking countries, along with the capital, in the correct location on the map. Let's just say that the results were LESS. THAN. STELLAR. I find that when students are asked where in the world Spanish is spoken I get the standard responses of "Spain!" or "Mexico!" and, because I'm now in the Cayman Islands, "Honduras!" and "Cuba!" are popular choices as well. While they may be able to spout off a few countries that speak Spanish, can they locate them on a map? Can they tell the capital city? If your students are like mine...probably not. Because of this, I was determined to dedicate a bit more time to this topic this year in order to really help my students get a better grasp of geography before we dive in to studying individual countries and culture. 

Here are some of things we are doing for this unit of study:

1. Map Labeling- I always start with showing a PowerPoint which highlights each country on a map. As each county is highlighted, I have students fill in their maps with the country name and capital. This year, since we are using interactive notebooks, they have a page in their notebooks dedicated to this map. 

2. Creating acronyms- After we label maps, we come up with acronyms to remember the order of the countries on the map. This year our acronym for remembering Mexico and Central America is:

For South America, we are using:

We couldn't leave out the other countries, even though this doesn't help with the map labeling:

You can check out these posters HERE!

3. Next, we add foldables to our interactive notebooks. I created a set of interactive notebook activities to help students categorize the geographic regions of the countries and to learn capitals. You can check those out HERE if you'd like. 

4. Students use their interactive notebook foldables to quiz themselves and each other. We also practice with a whole class game like "Yo Tengo...¿Quién tiene?" Countries and Capitals.  

5. I show the countries and capital rap. It drives students crazy, but I think they secretly love it! ;) It's all over YouTube, here is one link.

6. To assess this unit, I re-test students using a blank map and they are able to see that their knowledge has (hopefully!) greatly improved!

How do you teach countries and capitals?

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Teaching Time with Spanish Interactive Notebooks

This past week we began studying time. We started out with a PowerPoint on time and students took notes in their interactive notebooks.

Then we got started on our time foldables for our interactive notebooks. It gets a bit messy, but they are pretty good about cleaning up without being reminded. I do desk checks before they can be dismissed because there are, of course, those students who just shove scraps of paper into their desks. :)

For this time unit, I created 2 different types of notebook foldables, a set for time vocabulary and then a set of flipable clocks where students drew on the hands and then added the times underneath. They can use all of these as study tools to prepare for the quiz.

 I was also super excited to use a new time task card set, but ran out of time, so that will wait for next week. Tonight though, as I was writing this blog post from my kitchen counter, I looked outside and saw a beautiful sunset...I just had to share! Happy Friday all! Enjoy the weekend! 

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4 Ways to Use Memes in Spanish Class

Memes!!! Do you love them?? I can have a bit of a corny sense of humor, so these are right up my alley. I've been saving some that I have come across to this Pinterest board and I've started thinking of ways that I can incorporate them into my Spanish classes. I'm specifically choosing images that are clever yet simple enough for my beginning Spanish classes to actually "get".  As much as they may roll their eyes about some of these, deep down I know they love 'em. :)

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Teaching Subject Pronouns and Ser with Interactive Notebooks

So this past week we dove more into our interactive notebooks by starting a review unit on Subject Pronouns and Ser. My 9th grade Spanish class has down some basics since they had Spanish once a week in Middle School, so they have a jump start on Spanish 1 already. I started the lesson with Sra Cruz's subject pronoun PowerPoint which I've used for years to introduce the topic. The students took notes on one page of their notebook as we went through the PowerPoint. You can see that they are already working on using color and highlighting in their notes in the photos below. 

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2 Creative Activities for the First Days of Spanish Class

Whew...made it! Week one is over! As always, the first week of school is a bit hectic as the the year gets going. A positive (in most cases) aspect of teaching at a small school is that you pretty much know all of the students before they show up in your classroom. Many of these students are the same students I've had for the past 3 years, so we both know what to expect from each other. :) Here are 2 activities creative activities that we incorporated into our first week of Spanish class!

1. I was excited to have my students make ¿Quién soy yo? banners for the classroom. They enjoyed doing this and they added a nice touch to the bulletin board. Next time, I'll definitely have them write their answers to the prompts in a dark marker. This will definitely show up a lot better and make them easier to read from a distance.

You can grab this activity in my TpT store by clicking the photo below. :)

2. Next, I was really excited to have my students set up their "cuaderno interactivo". Ok, so this took a LONG time. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it did take awhile to explain the process and add the table of contents and grading rubric. We added the table of contents to the front cover and the grading rubric to the back cover. I plan to grade notebooks at the end of each quarter.

For their first notebook page, I had students brainstorm the topic "5 Reasons to Study Spanish". They then went home and created the page for their first homework assignment. I left the instructions open-ended and just told them to make a colorful graphic which included their 5 reasons. I was pretty pleased with what some of my interactive notebook newbie students came up with!

One student even listed her 5 reasons by drawing Grand Cayman and adding one reason to each of the 5 districts on the island. There's a little Cayman Islands geography lesson for your day. :)

Overall, a great first week!

How was your first week of school?

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Preparing for Back to School in Spanish Class

The time has arrived! You know what I'm talking about! It's officially back to school time. This past week was spent organizing my classroom, attending all the fun meetings, and beginning to wrap my head around the school year. First on the check list was to un-hurricane proof my classroom. Yes, this is an island teacher problem. Every year when school ends in June everything must be wrapped or boxed and moved (as much a possible) towards interior walls. Luckily, we haven't had any first hand hurricane experience since living here, but we still prepare every year. 

Here's a before and after classroom collage!

The interesting thing about my school campus is that it was previously a small apartment complex. It has a pool, which is really cool, but it also has really small classrooms for some of the grades/subjects. I'm thinking my classroom was probably someone's living room at one time...lol! It is definitely small and can fit about 10 desks comfortably. Our maximum class size is 14! Yes, a shocker coming from the US for sure! For my classes that have more than 10 students, I just travel to their class to teach my Spanish lesson.

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