A few months ago I shared a story I wrote using some yoga poses. Now I am sharing five easy poses to add to your repertoire that will be great to use just as a “brain break” in class. I don’t really do a full yoga session in class, but these are great to get your students moving while also exposing them to more vocabulary. I am always surprised to see how much more they can remember when we take the time for quick brain breaks in class. I also use the cards to play a game in which the children have to do what I say, but not what I do. They love it!
These are the new yoga poses that I am using with my students. I hope you like them! Click HERE to download them all!
How to print? Drag the pictures individually to your computer’s desktop and you will be able to print from there. Thank you to Educlips for illustrating these yoga poses so beautifully!
I hope everyone is having a great school year so far! This will be my 4th week with students. We spent the first week and a half making it a safe place for our students, getting to know to know one another and giving them a chance to get to know the space. I teach K-5, and this week was my first full week with my K students. Everything is so new for them that our school principal and their teachers feel that for specialists to start teaching them subject material from day one could be terrifying! I love this new approach of getting to know our students before we dive into our curriculums.
I have been working on classroom routines, classroom rules and encouraging them to use hand signals when we are in class. I have decorated my classroom with some input for them but will be adding more little by little. I feel that it doesn’t make sense for me to fill every space on the walls of my classrooms with signs that they don’t yet understand, and I know I am not in need of them yet.
I have been making some changes around the room according to the needs of my students. I have a deskless classroom. My K-2 students sit on the rug, and grades 3-5 have assigned seats. Each chair has a pocket where we keep our notebooks and pencils. That saves me time when we do writing activities.
I have a calendar, but I mostly use an online version projected on the board. The online version of the calendar has links to guess the day’s temperature in different Spanish countries.
I have about 115 students, so this poster has been helpful to remember dates. Every month we change it, and the children quickly write their name and date of their birthday.
I have a class list and have assigned a number to each of my students in each grade. I use these popsicle sticks (not a new idea!) to choose participants in the different games we play, since sometimes it is hard to choose. Students also have the choice to say “paso” to indicate “I pass.”
I added a reading corner to my classroom. I haven’t use it yet, but I plan to add copies of the TPRS® stories we do this year. I have some students who are heritage speakers, so I think they could benefit from other stories as well.
I also like comparing the time zones in different countries. I have a clock that shows Colombia, one for Austin and one for Equatorial Guinea. I might change the countries later.
I have decorated the classroom with some useful language, question boards and signals, and classroom rules. At the top of the board, I keep the flags of the countries of study. We do about 8 per school year with grades 2-5. One more thing is that this year the interactive board comes with a microphone which is great for the little ones. They can hear me better and are more engaged.
I have a projector that I can use to work on rewriting stories together or simply filling out worksheets in class. Best thing to have ever!
Next to the projector, I have a table with different props and with some Yoga cards that I use as brain breaks with my students.
I also keep a chime handy when the attention getters I use don’t work. Voice saver!
I have decorated the classroom with art from different Spanish speaking countries. I wish I had one to represent each country. So far I have a lot from Colombia, Panamá, La República Dominica, Guatemala, Ecuador, México, and Chile. I write the name of the country under the piece of art so students know where it comes from.
I also have have other small decorations around the room, mostly around my computer. I have a chair next to some furniture that is part of the classroom.
I use this chair for students to sit when we sing the birthday song.
This is a Friday selfie! Feeling ready to go home!
How is your school year going? Do you have a classroom, or are you traveling? I used to be a traveling teacher and wrote a post a while back about how I used to roll! You might find the post helpful!
¡Esta en una de mis épocas favoritas! Los huevos de plástico para las Pascua están por todos lados en el mercado. Una excelente oportunidad para comprar unos cuantos y encontrarles uso en la clase de español. A continuación les compartiré algunas ideas contándoles como los he usado en mis clases.
1. “Brain Breaks o “descansos mentales”
Es una manera para salir de la rutina y que los estudiantes escojan de manera sorpresiva el “brain break” o actividad de descanso mental. Pare esto necesitas haber enseñado los descansos mentales antes de imprimir la ficha con el nombre en el huevo de plástico. Les sugiero algunos cuantos. Por favor visita los enlaces para conocerlos.
La idea es esconder en el huevo de plástico una foto o material manipulativo que sea la respuesta de la adivinanza. Debes enumerar los huevos de plástico y las fichas con la adivinanza.
3. Los pollitos
Los huevos de plástico, especialmente los amarillos son perfectos para hacer pollitos. Simplemente necesitas marcadores permanentes. La foto muestra lo sencillo que es hacerlo. Enseña la canción “los pollitos”, imprime las letras de la canción, las pones dentro del pollito y listo. Es una actividad que se puede enviar a casa para que los niños canten la canción a su familia.
4. Organiza las oraciones, historias o palabras
Dependiendo del nivel de tus estudiantes, puedes contar tiras de papel con palabras u oraciones para que tus estudiantes las organicen. Estor huevos también pueden ser una herramienta útil para la construcción de palabras.
5. Los sentimientos
Esta es una de mis actividades favoritas. Dibuja una carita con una expresión sobre la tapa más grande del huevo de plástico. Escribe la palabra que va con la emoción. Mezcla los colores. Los estudiantes deben leer y organizar los huevos de acuerdo a la emoción y la palabra. Los puedes convertir en una competencia. Puedes tomar el tiempo y ver quien puede juntas los huevos en el menor tiempo posible.
Yes! The title sounds a little bit redundant, but we all have our own “ritualitos” (little rituals) that we do in every class.
I have been teaching for over 17 years now, and my experience is mostly in the United States as a Spanish teacher in a FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) program. Back when I was a PreK/First grade teacher in Colombia, I rarely felt that I was getting into a routine, which I equated with a rut or “getting bored” of doing the same things in class over and over. And while teaching in a world language program means you need to have a lot of repetition to help your students retain the language, this doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing every class!
When teaching in a world language program at the elementary level, we have to make sure we provide a sense of routine in the class to create a safe space for the children. I strongly believe in teaching in the target language as much as you can, which means having to use the language a lot and at the proficiency level of your students. This can sometimes limit the amount of activities you can do to vary your routine.
Here is a list of routines I do in my class. Please feel free to add more in the comments below! I would love to hear yours!
I always start my class with the “Plan de la clase” which tells my students what will be happening in class. I go over it with them and keep it very simple. This also can eliminate the stress in some of the anxious students who need to know what will be happening in class.
This is an example of how it might look depending on the grade level. The message below is for a second grade class, and I see them only twice a week for a 40-minute period each time. You can decide how to have the class read it. You can have one volunteer read the message or the whole class may read it together.
Plan de la clase
1. Saludos: ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?
2. El calendario
3. Canción: La familia sapo
4. ¡Vamos a jugar!: Pasa la bola
5. Describe a tu familia: ¿Cómo es tu familia?
6. Tiquete de salida
Since greetings are a key aspect of world language classes, here are some ideas to greet your students:
1. Try to change the greetings. One day you can use ¿Como estás? and then the other day “¿Qué tal?”.
2. You can pass a ball to students in class and ask the question yourself.
You can give turns to the children to respond and then pass the ball to the next person, and the child who responded will take a turn asking.
3. You can divide the class in pairs where one student asks then the other responds and vice versa.
4. You can divide the class into teams, one side answers and the other responds.
5. You can use puppets and let your students improvise their greetings for the class.
6. Play music in the classroom, have your students dance to the music, stop the music and choose a volunteer to greet the class. For example, “clase, ¿cómo estás?”
7. Place a picture of a famous person or movie character with information about themselves (see picture below). You can read this information to your students, then give turns for them to introduce themselves to the character or famous person by sharing the same information. See more here!
8. Place a simple picture that your students will have to use to complete their face. They can take turns doing this. Download the picture here!
9. Start with a Zumba or dancing routine to get everyone into the Spanish mood.
10. Use “brain breaks” during the routine or any time you see your students need help focusing and tuning again into class.
11. Read the days of the week with a feeling for each day. Find the picture here!
12. Make your calendar interactive. If you have an interactive board or a projector, a computer connected to the internet, take advantage of it and add a cultural/geographic aspect comparing seasons, temperatures and weather to your calendar. My students always love guessing what the temperature could be like in Colombia or any other Spanish-speaking country.
To add a more adventurous part, take a trip to any of the Spanish-speaking countries using Google Earth! Also check out my “Facebook Corner” for more ideas on routines for Spanish class!
Welcome to 2020! This year I have decided that I won’t make a list of resolutions for the New Year, only because I find myself writing the same list over and over again each year and not being able to follow through. I also generally add things that should be a habit in my life such as eating healthy, exercising more, reading more books instead of spending so much time on social media and so on! I did decide that I want to learn how to play ukelele and will tell you more about it at the end of 2020. Are you setting any goals for this year?
This holiday season I got to spend a few weeks in Colombia with my parents, and I am now feeling recharged with new ideas to bring to my classroom (even though I miss my parents).
I wrote my lesson plans my last day before going on break because I knew I was going to forget a lot of what I was doing in my classes.
Many children hit a kind of reset button during the break so as a general rule, I find it very helpful to treat the first few days after the holidays as I’d done on the first days of school in August. I think it is a good idea to review your classroom rules and procedures as well as continue building relationships with students and creating community before diving into teaching Spanish. This means that I will spend my first days revising our classroom rules and routines: discussing, modeling, and practicing rules. We practice how to walk in a line, enter the classroom, and find a place on the rug to get ready for class. We model it, talk about it, and keep reinforcing it for the rest of the school year. For me this also means that part of my class will take place in English the first few days back after the break. It will pay off nicely during the rest of the school year!
I use this opportunity to revisit the use of the chime with my students. We review that the chime sound means to stop, look, and listen. I also revisit some of our call & response chants, hand signals, and brain & breathing breaks.
Download these cards to introduce your students to “para, mira y escucha.”
¡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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