by Carolina | Dec 16, 2024 | curriculum, curriculum ideas
The winter season in the Northern Hemisphere is a time filled with celebrations, traditions, and holidays that reflect cultural diversity. While Christmas often takes center stage, it’s important for teachers to recognize that not all students celebrate Christmas. Some may observe other holidays like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Diwali, while others may not celebrate holidays at all. As educators, fostering an inclusive classroom environment during this season is essential for make sure that every students feels valued and represented. This is also an opportunity to learn more about your students and discover meaningful ways to connect with them.
Teaching About Diverse Winter Holidays in Spanish
If you’re a Spanish teacher looking to incorporate cultural diversity into your lessons, Holidays and Celebrations in Spanish (Las Celebraciones) is the perfect resource for your classroom. This engaging teaching tool introduces students to various global celebrations while helping them build Spanish language skills.
What’s Included:
- Two leveled readings
- Passages suitable for upper elementary students
- Comprehension activities
- True or False activity
- Two writing/drawing activities for students to share their own celebrations
Why It’s Important to Teach About Diverse Holidays
By highlighting a variety of holidays and traditions, we promote cultural awareness and respect in the classroom. Discussing celebrations like Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Diwali alongside Christmas allows students to see the richness of global traditions and helps them appreciate their classmates’ unique backgrounds. These lessons encourage empathy, build community, and create a classroom environment where every student feels included.
How to Use This Resource in Your Classroom
- Warm-Up Activities: Start each lesson with a holiday-related question or vocabulary review to engage students.
- Holiday Comparisons: Use Venn diagrams or group discussions to compare and contrast celebrations like Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa.
- Crafts and Storytelling: Incorporate crafts and stories about Día de Reyes or other holidays to bring traditions to life.
- Student Reflections: Encourage students to share their own traditions or create a mini-project about a celebration they learned.
This resource is available on Teachers Pay Teachers
by Carolina | Aug 20, 2022 | curriculum
As World Language educators it is hard to find a single off-the-shelf curriculum that fits the needs of each elementary program. Some programs have less frequent class sessions than others, some are required by their schools (or have the wonderful opportunity) to make strong connections with other subjects, some have more heritage speakers in the student population, and so on! It’s also important to shape a program according to the needs and interests of the community. All this is just to make it clear that I don’t offer a set “one size fits all” curriculum for this reason.
I have shifted to using more stories with my students, but I also supplement them with songs, games, crafts, picture books, holidays, celebrations, culture, cross-curricular connections, clip-chats, and other activities. I don’t teach a unit just focusing on weather, days of the week, months, the alphabet, foods, and so on. I include these topics in our daily routine when we do calendar time. The stories focus on high-frequency vocabulary and expressions as well as vocabulary related to clothing, family members, colors, numbers, and more!
These are some of the stories I use by grade level. It might seem like a lot, but the stories themselves have a lot of repetition and recycle a lot of the same vocabulary. This is also based on the frequency and length of time I see my students. I see my kindergarten students in small groups, once a week for 30 minutes and my 1st through 3rd grade students twice a week for 40 minutes each time. I mostly follow the resources in the order presented and sometimes I recycle stories and use them again the following year to refresh some of the vocabulary and high frequency words.
Kindergarten
¡Qué nombre tan bonito!
La ardilla y la bellota
Yo soy un pavo
Vamos a hacer un muñeco de nieve
La Marimonda
Corazón de melón
Los pollitos
¿De qué color soy?
First Grade
Me gusta como soy
Cinco calabazas
La iguana quiere lechuga
Las luces del invierno brillan ya
Una nariz para el muñeco de nieve
Corazón de melón (using other extension activities included)
El árbol furioso
Frida Kahlo
Todas las familias son diferentes
El cocodrilo va al bosque (coming soon to TpT)
Second Grade
Mi identidad (coming soon to TpT)
Monarca va a Michoacán
Día de Muertos (In connection with the monarch butterfly migration and a cross-cultural collaboration with science and art)
Gracias Madre Tierra
La Noche de las Velitas
¿Dónde está mi chaqueta?
Monarca vuela en la primavera
Carlos, el niño hada by Dr. Juan A. Ríos Vega (told using Story Listening) – Book and resources not included
Simón, el globito (coming soon to TpT)
Bundle coming to TpT soon!
Third Grade
La caja de identidad (coming soon to TpT)
Colorea el mundo (Clip chat)
Día de Muertos – Los alebrijes (cross-cultural connection with art)
Celebraciones en mi familia
Corre Año Viejo, Corre Todas las familias son diferentes (Illustrate story for classroom library)
Sirenas by Jessica Love ( told using Story Listening) – Book or resources not included
El perrito va a la escuela (Clip chat)
El gato y el perro (Clip chat)
Lola explora Colombia
Bundle coming to TpT soon!
Have fun! 
by Carolina | Jan 31, 2021 | curriculum
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!
?Any other books or resources you would add to this list? Please feel free to list them in the comments!
Con cariño,
by Carolina | Dec 1, 2015 | curriculum, Giveaways, Resources for Spanish Class, Spanish, video
I am so lucky to host this new giveaway! This time Speekee® is offering my readers the chance to win a 1-year subscription to their ever popular, ever evolving Spanish Scheme of Work for early and elementary teachers around the world. The Speekee Spanish Scheme of Work is video-based, with 350 lesson plans and supporting resources!
What do Spanish teachers say about Speekee?
Lisa says:
“Learners love it – the little ones love the fluffy characters and songs whilst the older ones like to see ‘real’ Spanish children and compare the places with where we live. They readily join in and ask for the songs to be repeated over and over! Non-specialists love it thanks to the oodles of support it offers them”
Lorena says:
“The planning is very good. It has got all that the Curriculum is asking for. It’s easy learning – and fun! With this program you can feel that everyone can speak Spanish, and everyone can teach as well. The children even teach each other!”
To find out more about Speekee, visit their site. You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
The Giveaway!
To enter the giveaway just sign up for a free 2-week Speekee Spanish Scheme of Work trial using the entry form below. The lucky winner will be chosen at random once the competition has closed on December 7th, 2015.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
¡Buena suerte!
by Carolina | Jun 7, 2013 | books, curriculum, Giveaways, REVIEW
Nothing is more exciting than finding great resources for Spanish class (okay, other than maybe traveling to Spain or Latin America on an extended, stress-free vacation …). Conversa books will get any teacher ready to teach Spanish and will help you present the language in a fun way. What I like the most about Conversa books is that the language is not presented as several isolated vocabulary words. Conversa does a great job of presenting the language in context. This helps teach students to identify main and important words in a sentence and learn how to decode them to find meaning. These books are good for classroom use or to extend learning at home. They can be used with children who are exploring the language or with native speakers. The sets are divided into elementary and middle school levels which will help you transition and have a consistent program. The program starts in 1st grade and goes all the way up to 8th grade. The illustrations are clear, fun and engaging.
This is a teacher’s dream! Every story in these books invites movement and taps clearly into TPR. Each book includes a teacher’s guide with tons of ideas and games that will save you a lot of time when planning for your classes. The teacher’s guide states the objective for every lesson, the materials needed, how the lesson should be introduced, gestures for each story, engaging activities, questions to ask while presenting the story, cultural information, simple crafts to make, and a lot of learning and fun! It also suggests songs for every lesson. The books provide a lot of repetition and model the Spanish language to invite students to later create their own compositions and stories.
Another important feature about this program is that there is no need to be an experienced storyteller or know everything about TPR to use these books in your classroom. Conversa Books will show you everything and will guide you through every step!
Visit Conversa Books to learn more about the program. Stay connected on Facebook to receive updates about sales, freebies for teachers, teaching tips and more!
Giveaway Time!
I know you would love to have this set for your classes. Here is an opportunity for you to have it! Conversa Books is giving away their Elementary Teachers’ Starter Kit. Just enter below to participate. The winner will be announced on June 12th, 2013. United States only.
