This school year, I’m really happy with how much more intentional and connected my teaching felt. That goes for both how I designed my lessons and how I built relationships with my students.

One of the biggest shifts I made was focusing on fewer short stories but exploring them more deeply. Instead of rushing through a bunch of them, I really slowed down our storytelling. This gave my elementary students plenty of time to absorb, interact with, and allowed for personalization. It helped them connect more meaningfully with the language, and I think it gave some of them the space to process and grow their confidence in acquiring the language. Telling stories is truly the heart of my curriculum, and my students are more engaged because every story, although it recycles high-frequency words and other vocabulary, also brings novelty, and for me as a teacher, it’s more fun.

Classroom Routines & Responsiveness

My classroom routines consisted of deep or quick calendar talks, which laid a solid foundation for using high-frequency language every day. Clip chats were also another way to bring stories to class. And those daily warm-ups—whether it was a joke, a question of the day, a quick survey, or chat mat conversations—helped students build a place of confidence. They became familiar with the routine, which allowed me to stay more in the target language and default less to English, which is the shared language in my classes.

Beyond these, movement and breathing breaks were also a consistent part of our class. I really needed to pay close attention to read my students and see what they needed on any given day. Throughout all of this, I continually employed comprehensible input strategies and methodologies, ensuring students understood the language they were hearing and using.

Activities like ¿Quién soy yo? (Who am I?) and La Persona Única (The Unique Person) were fantastic for letting students share about themselves and learn about each other in ways that felt authentic and personal. These routines weren’t just building language skills; they were building our classroom community. My students weren’t just learning Spanish; they were using it to express themselves, listen to others, and form genuine connections.

Classroom Management & Personal Growth

Establishing clear expectations and co-creating a classroom agreement was a significant plus at the beginning of the year. Although the initial language used for this was English, it later paid off immensely. I could maintain my expectations in Spanish because students already knew what I meant, and our classroom agreements, being in English, could be referred to where needed. Something important about this process is not just referring to the classroom agreements or expectations only when you need them. It’s crucial to be intentional about talking about and reinforcing them often, not just as a reactive measure.

On a more personal note, I’m really proud of the growth I made in my own organization and planning. This year, I made a conscious effort to have my Monday plans ready before the weekend started. That made a huge difference in how I approached each week, bringing so much clarity and confidence. I also dedicated time to refining my curriculum map and took care to color-code and label my materials by grade. These seemingly small shifts had a big impact on my day-to-day workflow. Every year brings its own unique challenges, but this one felt noticeably smoother and more manageable, thanks in part to the systems I put in place.

Overall, this school year was a powerful reminder that slowing down, building meaningful routines, fostering classroom community, and staying organized not only benefits my students but also grants me peace of mind. I’m walking away from this year feeling energized by the connections we built, the stories we shared, and the incredible community we created together. Here comes the summer!