On the positive side of this COVID pandemic, many of us have discovered the joy of connecting with colleagues and friends via Zoom. To be honest, I never got to use Zoom before the pandemic, and it now has become a tool that I not only use to teach but to meet with colleagues and family across the United States and the world.
A few months ago I started a monthly virtual meeting with colleagues who are registered on my mailing list (by the way, if you are not yet, you might want to do so for a chance to participate in our next Café Virtual!). The attendance at the virtual gathering is limited to allow for colleagues to connect and share experiences with others. As part of the Café Virtual, I gave myself the homework (no really) to write a post about what happens in each café to share with other colleagues who were not able to attend due to the limited size of the group. So here is the first post for our first Café this year!
On February 13 I hosted my first Café Virtual of 2021, and thirteen awesome and inspiring teachers attended. We all left with some amazing ideas to bring to our classes. Due to the current situation, we started by sharing how each of us has been teaching. Some teachers are working in hybrid settings, some in-person, others remote, you name it!
Although this café was focusing on games, we ended up sharing many great tips, activities, and music that work well with elementary students. Here is some of what was shared during our café!
Games:
El líder: Ask one student to leave the room. Ask a student in the room who will make gestures and who everyone needs to imitate. Invite back to the room the student who was outside. The líder starts making movements and gestures that everyone else in the room imitates. The student that had been outside now has three turns to guess who is leading the group. Variation for virtual settings: Send a student to the breakout room while you decide who will be leading the group.
Use of TPR with Images: Show images to your students to invite them to move. For example Jumping Jacks. Also, read stories and ask questions. Have them respond by using movement or gestures
Jamboard Activities:Jamboard is a way to make Google Slides more interactive. This collection of resources on my blog were also mentioned as a resource that works well in any teaching setting.
Use Bingo Baker to Create Online Games: This is a paid online platform that allows you to create online bingo cards using your own pictures. The game will generate individual cards for each participant. You just need to share the link to the game with the students. There are also many games already created on the platform.
Find more games for online and in-person classes here!
YouTube Channels and Other Online Resources
Songs also were a topic during our Café. Here are the ones that were mentioned. Make sure to add them to your list if you haven’t already done so!
Pre-Record Videos of Yourself for In-Person Classes
Some of these teachers have been making videos of themselves that they show during in-person classes to avoid the fatigue that teaching with a facemask might give you. This also helps the students to continue seeing the face of their teachers and keep them engaged during class. If you haven’t done it, all noted that this requires extra work but is well worth it!
Remove Adds from YouTube Videos:
This little tip is one that every teacher should know! Showing a video and have an ad pop up in the middle of a YouTube video is a teacher’s nightmare! This will save you! You will need to copy the link of the YouTube video and open it in another browser. Add a hyphen between the letters T and U, and voila! All the ads are gone! (i.e., change “youtube” to “yout-ube.”)
Interested in participating in the next Café Virtual? First, you will need to subscribe to my newsletter. One of the newsletters will include a link to register for the Café and the discussion topic. Space is limited. Only 15 participants can attend! If you are among the first 15 registrants, I will send you an email a few days before the Café Virtual with more info.
This year I decided to take a different approach on Valentine’s Day and focus on activities for the Random Acts of Kindness Week promoted by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.
I used this video with some of my classes as the basis for conversation. Just like many world language teachers do with clip talks/chats, I wrote a script based on the story and pre-taught some of the vocabulary using tools such as Quizlet and WordWallwhich, by the way, my students love because it gives them different possibilities to practice words at their own pace without the pressure of competing with other peers. I love it too!
Going back to the script, these are the words and phrases I focused on:
Colorea el mundo con actos de bondad, bondad, colorea, agarra, le da, tiene, come, corre, camina, se cae, llora, duerme, and chistosa (I put this last word on the list because, even though it is not a high-frequency word, I still wanted my students to learn it).
Here is the script:
Hay un niño y una niña. El niño tiene hambre. La niña tiene hambre.
El niño agarra una manzana y un sánduche.
La niña está sorprendida. La niña agarra un banano.
El banano está malo. La niña está triste.
El niño le da la manzana a la niña.
La niña agarra la manzana. La manzana es roja.
La niña come la manzana. La niña tiene colores.
La niña camina. El señor corre. El dinero se cae.
La niña agarra el dinero. La niña le da el dinero al señor.
El señor agarra el dinero. El dinero es verde. El señor tiene colores.
Hay una abuelita. La abuelita camina con una maleta.
La maleta se cae. El señor agarra la maleta y la pone arriba.
La abuelita está feliz. La abuelita tiene colores.
Hay una mamá y una bebé. La bebé llora. La abuelita lee.
Las personas no están felices. Las personas está enojadas.
La abuelita mira a la bebé. La bebé llora más. La abuelita tiene una idea. La abuelita es chistosa.
La niña está feliz y la mamá está feliz. La mamá tiene colores. La bebé tiene colores. Las personas tienen colores.
La mamá mira la computadora. La abuelita duerme. La bebé duerme. ¡Todos están felices!
¡Colorea el mundo con actos de bondad!
During the video
I paused the video and asked questions related to what we were watching, but also based on the script I wrote. I also made sure to ask the children after every situation “¿Es un acto de bondad?” to reinforce the title of the video.
I didn’t do a lot of extension activities this time, but as a closing activity, we brainstormed some acts of kindness that later were used in the craft shown in the picture below. Each child chose a picture, wrote on the cover of a paper heart, and inside wrote their name and a sentence explaining why they chose that word. Some of the children shared their words and read their sentences to the class. I was surprised to see that many of them wanted to share. My home learning students also got to participate through an activity on Seesaw, and the results were beautiful!
This is a simple idea to help bring the topic of kindness to a world language class. I placed their actos de bondad on a bulletin board that is currently in one of the classrooms where I teach.
While talking about how unique we are, I have used the book All the Colors We Are – Todos los colores de nuestra piel by Katie Kissinger, and it has been a great resource to start the conversation. The children love learning about the magic power we all have called melanin and how we get our skin color from the sun, our family, and our ancestors.
Here are some ideas to talk with your students about how unique we all are:
1. Start by reading the first pages of the book All the Colors We Are. This introduces the children to the idea that we all have different skin color and why everyone is unique, plus you will see that your younger students will enjoy saying the word “melanina” a lot!
I take the time to have this conversation in English. Chances are that your students are already reading books related to race/skin colors with their homeroom teachers too! This is a great opportunity to talk about the different eyes, hair, and skin colors in Spanish.
Mi ojos son de color negro, azul, café/miel
Mi pelo es negro, café, rubio
Mi color de piel es blanco, café, negro.
As the book All the Colors We Are suggests, children in younger grades can also compare their skin color to things in nature. I think this is great with lower elementary students but not as much with older students.
2. I created a resource to accompany and support the book All the Colors We Are. The resource is called Me gusta como soy. It includes a short story and activities that go along with it.
Read the short story Me gusta como soy– Something that has worked great during reading the story is to invite the children to engage in the reading by saying the phrase “A mí tambíen” after reading each page of the story. For example, if you read “Me gustan mis ojos,” invite the class to say “A mí también.” You might also ask again about the color of their eyes. After reading the story, make it a celebration by creating your own song with the lines in the story.
3. If you don’t own multicultural crayons,* colored pencils,* or markers,* you really need them for this! Allow students to look at the crayons, colored pencils, or markers to find which one matches or is close to their skin color. Put together mini-books using multicultural crayons and other colors.
4. Invite your students to take the mini-book home to share and start and share with their parents what they learned about where we get our skin color from.
5. Students who are learning from home can also complete their books via Seesaw.
I hope you join me in celebrating your students and talking about skin color in Spanish class!
Abrazos virtuales,
*Amazon Affiliate Links: Fun for Spanish for Spanish Teachers participates in the Amazon LLC Associate program. This post contains affiliate links wich means that this site earns advertising feeds by linking to Amazon products. Participation in this program doesn’t alter the cost for the buyer.
If you are looking for books to help you to rethink the content in your curriculum, here are a few! Hard to choose one since all of them are filled with great content. I love that these books have been written by educators for educators. I’m currently working on updating/replacing and creating units, and these resources have been a great support.
💚 “Unpack Your Impact: How Two Primary Teachers Ditched Problematic Lessons and Built a Culture-Centered Curriculum”: This book has great examples of how to reconceptualize lessons to help students think critically and go deeper, and beyond “fun facts.” I actually learned historical facts from this book myself!
💚 “Being the Change – Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension” is a book that I have used as a resource for the affinity group for students of color at my school. I have also been able to adapt some of the ideas presented in the book for my Spanish classes, e.g., Identity unit.
💚 I first came across the “Rethinking Schools” publications in a course I took for my master’s degree a little over ten years ago (time flies!). These books are filled with anecdotes and reflections from teachers and their classroom experiences. There is no need to read these books in a certain order. These are the two books in the video:
1. Rethinking Early Childhood Education
2. Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice – Vol 1
💚 Last, but not least “Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice” is a book written for world language educators, but anyone can benefit from reading it. This book has great examples of language lessons for different levels. I’m still working on finishing this one!
I just started teaching many of my students in person. I didn’t even know some of them because I was just assigning lessons to their grade through Seesaw and Otus (the Learning Management System used by the school where I teach). I have seen others quite a bit during our Zoom classes, as they have been participating in the home learning program which includes live (synchronous) classes.
When I started teaching more of the students in person in January, I had the opportunity to rethink many of my lessons and also connect to what the homeroom teachers have been doing in their classes. Students across several grades have read the book “Your Name is a Song” by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, and I have seen it frequently in the library. I have always loved the title of this book and decided to read it myself and find ways to incorporate it in class. I’m sure what I’m sharing here is not new and that many teachers inspired by the title of this book have asked their students to create songs with their names. I have used this activity with grades K through 5, and, to my pleasant surprise, the upper elementary students really enjoy singing their names.
I never change my students’ names in Spanish class for various reasons: (1) I want them to be respectful of other people’s names and not using them as something they can appropriate; (2) I love hearing my students say their names; and (3 because our names are part of who we are!
I must confess that I sometimes have a hard time pronouncing some of my students’ names, but I let them know that I need to hear them say it again and try really hard to say their names the way they pronounce them. This can be especially challenging for me because I tend to use my (occasionally thick!) Spanish accent while pronouncing their names. But I think it is really important for them to hear me facing a challenge and for them learn to hear my Spanish accent with English words, and to make a special effort to listen and understand English that has a different cadence and sound. I think that maybe it even builds greater empathy and tolerance.
I have been using a simple activity where I choose a student volunteers, and, as a group, we ask the question in the picture using some American Sign Language (ASL) from YouTube tutorials.
What’s your name?
For the part that says “¡Me gusta tu nombre!”, we make the heart shape with our hands.
And for the part that says “¡Es una canción!,” we use the following sign:
And then the student sings a song with his/her name.
Using this activity has been beautiful and a great way to connect with students!
¡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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