When I saw this affirmation on the board, my heart melted! It made me so hopeful that even these unique circumstances, and with the curriculum being all over the place this year that a student felt they could triumph in my class! What started out as a novel activity, is now a vital part of… Continue reading Using Affirmations in Spanish Class: Engage the Brain and the Heart!
Tips On How To Teach A World Language in a Split Reality. Spoiler alert: It's challenging but doable.
Filomena is my new favorite short story! It was written and performed by Theresa Jensen. You can find it on her storytime Youtube channel. The story and all its activities can be found on storylabs.com See the video for the story below and use in your class right away! *Activities for the story are at… Continue reading 10 Steps to working a short story IPA style in Your Classroom!
Our virtual classrooms can resemble a high-security vault in where the only thing you hear is yourself breathing. What if I told you, it did not have to be like this? Well, it's true! There are ways that we can motivate students to talk online, and have a great time doing it!
Sometimes we fret over how to teach, or how students will learn some of those high-frequency structures in Spanish. I remember a few years ago, I just could not fit it all in. It was tiring. However, developing a more CI approach to my curriculum, has freed up a lot of bandwidth, encouraging creative twists… Continue reading Estate Tranquil@: Don’t teach the verb Estar; Rather Use It for Real Communicative Purposes in Your Classroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur5AX25CkiQ&t=3s It’s undeniable that student voice, choice and interest must be the bread and butter of the curriculum. Just think, if your administrators or superintendent polled teachers before rolling out new systems and/or protocols… the education system would be debugged, optimized, and a potential maximizer! Student success would be at an all-time high. Okay, that… Continue reading Adding Student Voice and Choice To An Already Set Curriculum: ¡Sí se puede!
Today was a jam session two days before Winter Break! We had a full house, and I hope they enjoyed the festivities. One of the things I love about Jamboard (a new collaborate feature from Google), is that I can assign student work, and monitor it at simultaneously. It's like having communal work time. This… Continue reading A Jamming Success! Teaching Holiday Traditions in a Time-crunched Spanish class!
Mind The Gap As we go into next week, I felt compelled to share this energy-preserving teaching strategy that has saved me my sanity and preserved my energy. It's super simple: Create a gap space between classes, especially when they are back-to-back. We get so carried away wanting to instruct to the very last minute… Continue reading Mind The Gap: An Energy-preserving Teaching Strategy for Virtual Learning & Beyond!
I am finally learning to have fun on the virtual playground. It is a mix of “Ya está” and, well, just making that good old-fashioned lemonade. Although there is no comparison (similar to real ice-cream, versus the soy variety), I am learning to leverage the right tools to get students talking, laughing, and having temporary… Continue reading Quick Communicative Wins with Novice-Low Students
Ready to Work! Last week was my first week of school and I thought it was going to end up much like the picture below. I had heard the stories, seen the posts, read the vents along with the parade of retirement announcements. To quote Gloria Gaynor, at first I was afraid, I was petrified… Continue reading Virtual Reality Survivor’s Guide To Teaching Remote!
Well, we have two new resources in the Teaching Spanish Made Easy family! Check them out! And best of all, you can use for remote instruction or face to face! I love writing and even more so short stories. These are my new ones out the gate. First up we have "Mi vida es un… Continue reading Divide and Conquer: Digital Resources that Add Some Jazz to Class!
Picture by E. Gómez, Barcelona In an effort to give teachers a peek inside my classroom, I will be using this space to share resources, ideas, and lessons that have shaped by Identity unit for my level 4 classroom. This unit consists of a plethora of resources, both paid and free. Some of the resources… Continue reading The Formation and Politics of Identity: Spanish Level 4 Unit by A.C. Quintero
Caras Vemos, Corazones No Sabemos: A New and Compelling Novel From The Creative Mind of Theresa Jensen
Confesionista: Anyone who uses the novels "La clase de confesiones" or "La bella mentira" in class! Confesionistas, this animated book trailer/ Movie Talk has been in the works for a very long time, and I am so excited to be finally launching it! I actually started this project one year ago, and have been so… Continue reading Animated Book Trailer And Movie Talk For The Spanish Level 1 Novel: La clase de confesiones.
We all are looking to simplify our lives. These activities help teachers to utilize authentic realia in the class, with a true purpose.
During my last full day classes, students had an opportunity to share about their top five lessons and activities of the school year. Of course, they raved about Free Voluntary Reading (click here to read post), the Telenovela project, Conversation Circle the assortment of level 1 readers we explored, and of course, the Netflix mystery,… Continue reading The Writing on the Wall: The Role of Word Walls in a Comprehension-based Classroom
This is the newest addition to my library. I just finished reading, and what a love story to mothers! It is told from the perspective of a young daughter who watches at all the things her mother does and subsequently surmises that she must be a superheroine, and she is right! The book is aesthetically… Continue reading New Book Alert: Mi mamá es una superheroína
Feliz Año Nuevo: Starting the New Year With el pie derecho. Activities & Games to Get them talking in Spanish Class!
My students constantly reported struggling with listening tasks; this has become the Krytonite in our language program. No matter how many times students would hear a conversation or audio, it was very challenging for them to comprehend. So I decided to approach listening differently in my class. Check out the video for more details. Notes… Continue reading Listen up! Listening Strategies for Interpretative Tasks
