Spring is here! The season of colors, butterflies, and also allergies, but it’s nice to feel that the heat is gradually coming on. If you have the chance to get outside with your students, nature walks are a great way to spend time outdoors after a long winter. You can use this walk as a space to continue giving input to your students. Simple activities like talking about colors, animals, counting objects in nature or just reading a story outdoors. Talk to your students as they walk and point out things they see or may not have noticed before. It is an opportunity that really helps to clear your mind and relax.
If it is not possible for you and your students to have this opportunity at your school, give your students a copy of the “Una caminata en la naturaleza” page and invite your students to look around their home or community to find some or all of the things on the list. Invite them to take the sheet back to Spanish class and use it to talk about what they saw on the walk. Use questions to motivate your students to participate. For example, what color was the butterfly? how many butterflies did you see? who found a squirrel? Your students must answer according to their language level. This can be done orally or in writing.
Invite your students to participate through the movement. For example, jump if you see a yellow butterfly or run if you don’t see a butterfly.Use this page to create a survey. Ask them about their favorite animal and write down their answers. Share the answers and talk about the animal that had more or less votes.
One last idea is to invite your students to look at the clouds and draw what they see in them. Use these drawings to continue giving input and also to generate interaction in your classes. Talk about the different shapes, shapes, colors, etc. Your students can also collect materials from nature to create their own. Depending on the language level of your students, you can invite them to describe their art orally or in a written composition. Display their work around the round and do a gallery walk with your students. I hope you and your students enjoy these activities to welcome spring.
If you are like me, and you enjoy incorporating the monarch butterfly in your classes, you will love this adaptation of the evolution game. I call it “El ciclo de la mariposa.”
Before playing this game, students need to understand how to play the rock, paper, scissors game in Spanish. I use a visual like the one below and play the game to make sure that students understand it and also to give them vocabulary in Spanish.
Once students know how to play the piedra, papel, tijeras game, I proceed to show the instructions to add the El ciclo de la mariposa game. I only use three stages of the life cycle, which are oruga, crisálida, and mariposa.
Playing the game:
1. Each student will find a classmate to play piedra, papel and tijeras.
2. Everyone starts out as an oruga, which is a kind of seated snuggle up.
3. After playing piedra, papel, tijeras, whoever wins will move to the next stage or one stage up, which in this case is crisálida. For this position, students put their arms up like making a house.
4. At this point, orugas can only play with orugas, and crisálidas can only play with crisálidas. Play piedra, papel, tijeras, and, once again, whoever wins will move one level up. If a crisálida loses, that student will go back to being an oruga. For the butterfly stage, students move around the room flapping their arms and pretending to be butterflies. Now, orugas play with orugas, crisálidas with crisálidas, and mariposas with mariposas. Whoever loses will always go back to being an oruga.
You can decide how long to play the game. Whoever gets to be a mariposa wins the game. (There can be multiple winners)
This year I have been receiving more messages than ever from new Spanish teachers, so dear new Spanish teacher, this post has been written with you in mind. I completely get it! With the current situation and all the uncertainty for the fall, it’s completely normal for any teacher (no matter how long you have been teaching) to feel nervous, but especially for our colleagues who are new to the profession.
I try to put myself in the shoes of a new teacher during COVID times, and I can’t imagine the frustration that some of you might be feeling. Thinking about starting the new school year in a virtual classroom environment makes me feel butterflies in my stomach, but I am also grateful that at least there are digital tools and platforms to support our teaching. I am aware that those tools might not be accessible for every student or teacher, which I can’t wrap my head around because I don’t live in a third world or developing country, yet the inequities of this system are real and more visible during COVID times.
Because I don’t have experience starting the school year in a virtual way, I can only go back to my feelings during my first years of teaching and rely on what has worked for me under “normal conditions” while adapting for what I have learned more recently and giving it my best shot.
Support System
Something that I remember was very valuable as a first time Spanish teacher in the United States was the group of teachers who were supportive and open to be my shoulder to cry on when needed. We were seven Latinas in a very white school system in suburban Boston. They were welcoming and happy to share all their knowledge with me. This was almost 20 years ago, so no Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter were there. I do remember some Yahoo Groups and a website run by a veteran Spanish teacher called “Anacleta’s World Language and Cultural Resources” that I frequently visited to get inspired.
After teaching in that school system for 4 years, the district held a property tax override vote, and guess which program got eliminated first? You guessed right! The Spanish program 🙁 . After that, I moved to a private school and there I was the only PreK-3 Spanish teacher. The school also had a French program for grades 4-6 alongside the Spanish program, so the French and Spanish teachers worked together, and I was kind of on my own. It felt very lonely, and that’s what inspired me to start my blog. I wanted to be able to connect virtually with other teachers who were teaching the same early grade levels as I was. I also contacted other elementary Spanish teachers in my area and hosted monthly meetings to exchange ideas and vent if needed. In the school where I currently teach, I have two colleagues, and we teach the same levels, so it’s nice to have someone to exchange with and learn from for professional growth. Along with this, I belong to a few Facebook groups for Spanish teachers and also am part of a small WhatsApp group with two other Colombian teachers (Profe ValentinaandLa Profe de Español) where we frequently communicate to share ideas and support each other.
Why am I telling this whole story? Well, just to invite you to find your support system. It could be colleagues in other schools close to you or a teacher who can serve as your mentor in your own school. If you use social media, I recommend identifying a few Facebook groups or teachers on Instagram that you can follow and learn from. I do advise starting with just a few because it might be overwhelming with tons of information and little time to process while navigating a new profession.
Understand in Which Type of Program You Will Be Teaching
Knowing the type of program you will be teaching in will help you think about the short and long term goals for your program. So much depends on the amount of contact time you will have with your students. The program may be FLES* (Foreign Language in Elementary School), FLEX* (Foreign Language Experience), a Content-Based program, or a number of other program types, but just by knowing the type of program will help you identify some of your goals and keep a nice balance between ambitious idealism and being practical within the limitations of the program’s boundaries. Visit this link to understand more about the various different types of programs. And if you need to play a sort of public / stakeholder relations role, knowing the type of program will also help you to educate your administrators, school community, and parents (and nicely but firmly help them temper or gear their expectations for the language acquisition process, pace, etc.). I’ll say it again, knowing what type of program you have will also help you create short and long term goals for your program – for students, for yourselves, and for key players in the wider community in which your work is situated.
*FL should be changed to WL!
Get To Know Your School Community
The first year is hard for any teacher in a new school. You are trying to understand the school community and culture, getting to meet and name the different people in your school, understanding what each acronymous means and so on! The most important people, apart from your students are the custodians and the school administrative staff. They will be the ones who will help you first! Our school secretary sometimes covers our classes when we need to do quick things in school. So keep their names in your head and make sure to thank them with a big “GRACIAS” all the time!
KISS, KISS, KISS= Keep It Simple Sweetie!
If this is the first year for your program, you might have to teach the same units or stories to every grade level while you build up your curriculum. You might need to developmentally adapt the content to make it fit for every grade. You will find yourself creating materials, so keeping it simple is the best way to go. I have found that because the needs of elementary language programs can vary so much, it’s hard to stay with just one “commercial” or “off the shelf” curriculum.
Identify some themes or stories you want to teach and take it from there. You might want to do a cursory internet search and explore what other teachers have shared. Something to take into consideration is making sure the curriculum is not perpetuating stereotypes about Latinos and their different cultures while also making sure that it shows how super diverse the world’s 21 Spanish speaking countries are.
Here are some curriculums shared by other elementary Spanish teachers:
Something that I really like doing at the beginning of the school year is sharing a short PowerPoint presentation or video about me. I shared where I was born, my likes and dislikes, and I find ways to make connections with students while sharing about me. Students really like knowing something about their teachers and connecting with us as people.
Here are some examples of what I have done in the past to start building relationships:
Singing to celebrate birthdays is extremely important for some elementary students, especially in the younger grades. If children have summer birthdays, I recommend you do one summer birthday celebration for all the children with summer birthdays early in the school year or, if they would prefer to be special and have a day just to themselves, celebrate half birthdays (just watch out for December vacation …). I like starting each month talking about the calendar to include holidays, special events at school, andbirthdays! Luckily this is something that can be done virtually or in the classroom.
There is a part II for this post! There I share about the use of the target language, classroom routines and norms, links to language organizations, and more!
I couldn’t have gotten this book at a better time! With the monarch butterfly migration heading south, this book is the perfect way to introduce it. Señorita Mariposa was written by Mister G, Latin GRAMMY award-winning children’s musician who currently lives in Massachusetts. Señorita Mariposa is a short but engaging bilingual picture book. The story is catchy and truly represents the journey of the super generation of monarch butterflies. In this book, Señorita Mariposa is traveling south in search of a warmer place. While making the journey south, Señorita Mariposa brings joy to many lives. While reading the book, the reader can easily put him or herself in Señorita Mariposa’s shoes (very small shoes!) and feel what she goes through while she embarks on her journey.
The book’s illustrations are appealing, and many readers will be able to see themselves represented in them. In the book, Señorita Mariposa travels through different landscapes to show and prove how strong a little butterfly can be. Señorita Mariposa is a beautiful tribute to the monarch butterfly.
After reading the book with your students, I would suggest you and your classes join the Symbolic Butterfly Migrationhosted annually by the organization Journey North. What a great way to send many paper butterflies to accompany Señorita on her journey.
Señorita Mariposa was just released, and it’s now available on Amazon. It would definitely make a great addition to your school or classroom library!
I have these Day of the Dead books in my classroom and have seen how my students get motivated to look at them to read and look at the art. In the elementary Spanish program at the school where I teach, the Day of the Dead is one of the cultural explorations we do to help our students to understand what this celebration means to many communities in Mexico. We are not celebrating it, but we aim to show appreciation of a tradition that’s important to another culture. The Day of the Dead is not related to Halloween. The Day of the Dead is a two-day celebration to remember loved ones who have passed away. This is a happy and colorful celebration. Here are my five top book picks:
Día de los Muertos (Celebrate the World) introduces children to the meaning of the celebration in a fun and dynamic way. Students are also exposed to Spanish vocabulary related to the celebration.
Uncle Monarch and the Day of the Dead has a beautiful story that shows the importance of Monarch butterflies in this celebration. In some places in Mexico, it is believed that these butterflies carry the souls of loved ones who have passed away.
I feel that these next two books need teachers to provide a little bit of background about this celebration before sharing them with the children.
Clatter Bash!: A Day of the Dead Celebration is a vivid book! There is not much text, but it’s great to use to describe the pictures. The illustrations will keep your students engaged. At the end of the book there is plentiful information about the Day of the Dead celebration.
Last, but not least! HERE is a banner to decorate your classroom!
¡Hola! I am Carolina, a Colombian elementary Spanish teacher based in Boston, MA. Fun for Spanish Teachers is the result of my passion for teaching Spanish to children and my desire to inspire collaboration and creativity in a vibrant teaching and learning community. It’s the perfect stop if you are looking for songs, games, teaching tips, stories, and fun for your classes.
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introduces children to the meaning of the celebration in a fun and dynamic way. Students are also exposed to Spanish vocabulary related to the celebration.
is by far my favorite. I love all the art in the book. The book is bilingual, so you can choose in what language you want to read it. If you get the audio, you will love the music. The book was narrated by Rita Moreno.
has a beautiful story that shows the importance of Monarch butterflies in this celebration. In some places in Mexico, it is believed that these butterflies carry the souls of loved ones who have passed away.
is a fun and short book for younger students. Great to introduce and review family members in the context of El Día de los Muertos.
is a vivid book! There is not much text, but it’s great to use to describe the pictures. The illustrations will keep your students engaged. At the end of the book there is plentiful information about the Day of the Dead celebration.
