If you are not using Jamboard yet, you are missing an amazing tool to create interactive activities. This tool has been a lifesaver with my online students. I really like that is simple to use and that everything gets saved onto your drive and the number of activities you can create are endless. This tool is not fancy which sometimes can make it limited. You only have one font that you can use and about six different colors which actually can save you time because there are not a lot of options. If you want more complex images and fonts you can create images on PowerPoint or Canva and then upload them to Jamboard. If you want to learn more about how to create activities on Jamboard, I highly recommend you stop by Profesora Delgadillo’s blog to find some awesome tutorials and more ideas.
How Have I Used Jamboard With My Students?
I have used Jamboard with my K-5 home learning students and I teach through Zoom. With my K-2 students I have created activities where they participate by telling me which pieces to move.
For my grade 3-5 students, I have made the activities more interactive. I share the link with them in the chat on Zoom. Make sure that when you share the link you are giving them editor privileges for the Jamboard. I have small groups so I am able to duplicate the slides on Jamboard and assign slides for them to work on, but if you prepare in advance you can make the slides you need and assign a number to each of your students.
Activities That Have Worked Well in My Classes
¿Qué es?: I use this activity with my kindergarten and first-grade students. I create different slides with different pictures, and they seem to have fun knowing what’s being discovered. They tell me the numbers that I should move, and then I start taking guesses anytime I move a number.
2. Relaciona la palabra: I share the link in the Zoom chat and give different students turns to match the word with the picture.
3. Rompecabezas: I have used this with grades 2 and up! With my grade 2 students, I give them control by using the remote tool on Zoom. This gives access to the control one student at a time. Click here to watch a quick tutorial to learn how to use remote access during live classes. With older students, I share the link on the chat. You can ask them a question related to something they are learning in your class and give them turns if they answer correctly or try. You can also make multiple copies of this slide. Assign a slide to each student in your class and have them put the puzzle together as a brain break. You can find different digital puzzles on Teachers Pay Teachers. Busy Bee Studios has great ones on TpT.
4. Crea una flor: You can use this slide to ask questions, and anytime students get the correct answer you move a part of the flower to put it together.
5. ¿Dónde está el perrito?: My kindergarten students really love this activity. I make different slides and hide pictures of animals or fruit, and they need to find it. They just say the number, and I move the tile with that number.
6. Lee y relaciona: This activity works great with students in grades 3 and up! You can prepare different slides, share the link, and give turns to different students.
7. ¿Cómo estás?: This is a simple activity to check on your students and talk about emotions. Students need to use the pencil tool to complete the face. They can also use the typing tool to write the word next to it.
8. ¿Qué hiciste durante las vacaciones?: This is by far one of the activities my 4th and 5th graders enjoy. We use the laser tool to circle and talk about what we did during the break and sometimes over the weekend.
9. Tic-Tac-Toe known as triqui in some parts of Colombia, it’s always fun to play it in class!
Overall I love using Jamboard. I wish they had more choices of fonts, colors for the pencil, and the ability to lock the images so students can’t move them around. Sometimes the images get moved by accident.
Are you ready to explore Jamboard with your classes? Click here to grab all the activities above!
This year I wanted to do something more connected to nature in some of my classes for Thanksgiving, but this resource can be used any time during the school year. It’s a great and simple way to talk about gratitude with your students. I came across these two beautiful books that inspired my short story in Spanish called “Gracias Madre Tierra.”
The first book is called “Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message” by Chief Jake Swamp. If the book is not available, you can find different read alouds on YouTube, but the one below is my favorite.
It’s also a great idea to team with homeroom teachers and ask them to read the books with your students. What a beautiful way to create cross-cultural connections!
Here are some ideas that can be done in class:
Have a conversation about the true story of Thanksgiving. Hopefully, this conversation is also happening with your students’ homeroom teachers. And yes! I have this conversation in English with my students.
I have attended some conferences that start with land acknowledgments, especially the People of Color Conference. The school where I currently teach has a land acknowledgment on their website, and many other public and private institutions have one too!
Land Acknowledgement: This is usually done at the beginning of a public event to recognize and acknowledge Indigenous Peoples’ land and belonging to a certain territory. It’s a way to honor and show respect to the Indigenous Peoples of the land on which we live or visit. Once you have identified whose lands you are on, you can share the information with your students. It is not necessary to use Spanish for this portion of the class, but you are of course welcome to give it a try.
Here is an idea of what you can say:
I do have to clarify that I am not an expert on this topic, but given the history of these lands, it’s important for our students to know and acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples whose lands were stolen and not to sugarcoat this issue.
Use this website to learn about the territory you live on: Native-Land.ca
Resources to learn more about Land Acknowledgement:
I am proud of this resource I created in connection with the gratitude theme. With this resource I also invite teachers to bring Land Acknowledgment to their classes, take a nature walk, and invite students to be thankful to our Madre Tierra.
“Día de Todos los Santos” (All Saints’ Day) is celebrated on November 1st, but if this date falls on a weekend, the celebration is moved to Monday to make it a long holiday weekend. This is known in Colombia as “La Ley Emiliani”, and it happens with some celebrations. As a result, Monday is a day off for many people in the country.
Growing up in Colombia I remember Día de Todos los Santos as a day to go to church or go to the cemetery to bring flowers and remember the loved ones who are no longer with us. Since I grew up in a big city, I could see that nothing big happened on that day. However, there are other places in Colombia where this celebration has a deeper meaning. I recently became aware of these celebrations.
The Misak People and All Saints Day
For the Misak People in the Cauca Department located in the Andes mountains in Southern Colombia, November 1st (as this article states) marks the first day of the new year, and November 2nd is a day to take offerings to the church and the cemetery.
This fun celebration is also known as “Tintilillo” and is celebrated in some areas of the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. I was able to find some videos, and if you watch them all, you can hear that they have a variety of songs. In some places, they are asking for ingredients to make sancocho and in other places, children are asking for candy.
I am sure there are other places in Colombia that have their unique celebrations to remember their loved ones and celebrate their lives.
This game was created to use with my younger students to review colors. Many of them are into Halloween right now, so this is a good way to keep them engaged. This game is played just like any “Would You Rather?” type of game, where you have a set of questions and students respond to choose what they prefer.
In this case, you might want to review colors first. As you can see in the pictures, there are two little hands. Students can respond by saying “uno” or “dos” or by pointing with their hands. Another option would be to divide or mark your room with the numerals 1 and 2 for students to go stand at to show their answers. You can also replace the numbers with actions like “jump” if you prefer, or “dance” if you prefer. It all depends on your space and how you are teaching these days (remotely or in-person). No matter how you are teaching these days, I am sure this will add some fun to your classes.
Before bringing this game to your classes, make sure that all your students are okay with Halloween celebrations. As a personal experience, a few years ago I had a student in one class who didn’t feel comfortable with Halloween, so in the class, we shifted to focus on the autumn season and still got to use some pumpkins and put emotions in it.
Growing up in Colombia we didn’t have a “Columbus Day.” This “holiday” was called “El Día de la Raza” to celebrate the different races born after the mix of a not a very pleasant encounter. Even though it wasn’t known as Columbus Day, it was still meant to focus on the “great” things Columbus did for us (we celebrated Cristobal Colón, as he is known in Spanish). I have a vivid story of when I was in 3rd grade and Profe Raquel told us that if it weren’t for Cristopher Columbus we would not have been sitting in that classroom listening to the stories of how brave he was to travel across the Atlantic to new lands. Although teachers made an attempt to recognize the diversity in Colombia, it continued supporting the main narrative that Columbus was great and brave. I never remember hearing of all the bad he did to the people who were in the territories where he landed until later when I was in bachillerato (high school).
In the last decades, countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua have opted to change the name of this holiday to “El día de la Resistencia Indígena” to honor the struggles the Indigenous people went through during the colonization period and to acknowledge that these struggles are not over. Other countries have joined this movement too!
As language educators, we can’t continue supporting the sugar-coated stories about Cristobal Colón. This is an invitation to make space and time in our curriculums to have these conversations and show the true story. It doesn’t matter if it takes some class time to have these conversations in our students’ first language. Children might also be having these conversations within their homerooms, so this can be reinforced in Spanish class.
A teacher friend that I admire and has been working hard on bringing this work to the classroom is Fran, also know as The Woke Spanish Teacher. Her curriculum is deep in Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist (ABAR) education and she works on this all year round. When doing this type of work in the classroom, it is important to know your students and also their developmental stage so that the material can be tailored to their age group. This is something that I am currently working hard on and something Fran knows how to do really well.
Here is an example of what Fran does with her students:
But before bringing these topics to the classroom we have to do the work. We really need to educate ourselves. There are several trustworthy sources on the internet. Here are some that I recommend:
Just like this post on Instagram, as a language educator, I need to be intentional and not just acknowledge other cultures at designated times on the calendar.
¡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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