If you don’t know the “Running Dictation” activity, this link has a great explanation about it. This game is a variation of the Running Dictation. I call it “Telephone Dictation” just to give it a new name, but I am sure someone else has adapted it too. I have used it with third and fourth graders, but I am sure it works with upper levels as well.
You will need:
A clipboard.
Five pieces of blank paper.
A pencil.
A chair or a place to put the sentences.
Five or more sentences.
I divide my classes in groups of three or four. Each group gets a clipboard, a pencil, and five pieces of paper. Then I instruct them to sit in a line. I place all the materials in front of the line. I also place a chair with with 4 or 5 sentences at the end of the line. I recommend not using more than 5 sentences with lower grades.
The student who is at the end takes a sentence and reads it to the student sitting in front of him/her. Then that student whispers the sentence in the ear of the next student. They keep passing the message along until it makes it to the student at the front of the line. That student takes one of the pieces of paper and writes the message. When that student is done, he goes to the end of the line, takes a new sentence, and it starts all over again. I ask the student at the end of the line who is reading the sentence to crumple it up once they are done reading it.
Once they are all done with the sentences they have to get together to organize them and make sense of them. Taken together, the sentences usually relate to a story or book we are reading in class.
Are you ready to try this activity in your next class? Let me know how it goes!
How can we make culture accessible and meaningful in the early years of Spanish learning? For those of us who teach with Comprehensible Input (CI), culture isn’t an “extra” — it’s at the heart of what we do. But helping novice learners connect to cultural topics in ways they can understand takes intention and care.
In this post, I’ll walk you through how I define both Comprehensible Input and culture, how they work together in the elementary classroom, and some practical tips to make it happen.
What Is Comprehensible Input?
The term Comprehensible Input was introduced by linguist Stephen Krashen as part of his theories on language acquisition. Krashen explains that we acquire a new language when the input (what we hear or read) is understood and interesting to the learner — not just a list of words or grammar rules. In other words, students acquire Spanish when they understand the message. The content should be relevant, engaging, and connected to their own lives.
What Do We Mean by “Culture”?
The word culture can mean many things depending on who defines it. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz described culture as “a system of values and beliefs that represent a group, a network of meanings within which people live, encoded in symbolic forms such as language, artifacts, rituals, and traditions.”
When we teach through CI, our goal is to make these “networks of meaning” comprehensible to our learners. That means choosing cultural content that is not only authentic but also understandable and age-appropriate for elementary students.
How I Integrate Culture Through CI
I like to start by asking myself two simple questions:
What’s my goal with this topic? Why do I want to explore it with my students? What connection or understanding do I want them to walk away with?
Is this topic accessible for my learners? Can it be made comprehensible at their language level? Is it appropriate for their age and experiences?
These questions help me stay focused on meaning and connection — not just coverage.
Steps for Making Culture Comprehensible
Here’s an approach that has helped me bring culture and language together in a natural way:
1. Define the theme or cultural focus.
Choose a topic that’s authentic, true, and free from stereotypes. Whenever possible, consult with someone from the culture you’re representing to ensure accuracy. Remember that “culture” doesn’t have to come only from the target-language country — it can also include comparisons with students’ own communities.
2. Determine the input.
Your students don’t need to understand every word. What matters is that they understand the message. Use visuals, gestures, cognates, and context to support meaning.
3. Select your materials.
Use authentic or semi-authentic resources such as:
Photos and visuals
Short videos or songs
Simple stories
Cultural artifacts or realia
These materials make cultural topics tangible and memorable while keeping the input comprehensible.
Bringing It All Together
Yes, it’s absolutely possible to teach culture in a CI-based classroom — and it can be powerful! The key is to make cultural input understandable, relevant, and respectful. When students can both comprehend and connect, language becomes a bridge to deeper cultural understanding.
Start small: pick one cultural focus this month, simplify the language, and let students explore it through stories, songs, and visuals.
Ready to Start?
If you’re new to this approach, I’ve gathered some helpful resources and classroom-ready ideas to get you started with Comprehensible Culture.
👉 Visit the Fun for Spanish Teachers Shop on TPT or explore the Elementary Spanish Community, where we dive deeper into topics like this through live sessions, resources, and teacher collaboration.
MovieTalk is a Comprehensible Input tool created by Dr. Ashley Hastings. Students get engaged listening to comprehensible language in a short video or clip. These videos are usually not longer than five minutes and are compelling to the learners. In my experience using videos with lower elementary students, videos that are not longer than 3 minutes work great.
Every time I start a MovieTalk I remind my students that I will be talking and pausing the video. As recommended by others, this video will be played silently. And once we are done with our MovieTalk their prize will be to watch the video entirely without me pausing it.
In preparation for the MovieTalk, I choose a short video, look at it, and prepare in a script in my head that I will be using with my students. I always make sure the videos provide space for repetition. I identify structures that I know I can TPR with my young students before doing the MovieTalk.
Here is an example of a video I have used with first graders. It’s called “Feliz San Valentín con Pocoyo”.
Some words that I can TPR with my students before presenting the video: mira, camina, feliz, baila, escucha, vuela, se ríe, le tira and busca.
Most of the time I write a script of what I want to say in the video. Having a script helps me identify structures and repetitions in the video, as well as some questions to PQA (Personalize Questions & Answers)while talking about the video.
I take screenshots of the movie and also use the pictures to talk about them when done with the MovieTalk. I also like putting the story together and read it later to class. Since this is meant to be used with kinder and first graders, I don’t ask for a lot of output. However I do hear some phrases and words my students produce after we listen to the MovieTalk and talk about the pictures.
Need the script and slides for your classes? Click the picture below. After you subscribe, it will prompt you to make a copy.
As a native speaker, I find it fairly easy to stay in the target language (TL), and I’m aware that it’s important to keep my communication simple and to do as much as I can to keep my instruction at the proficiency level of my students, and, more importantly, to make it comprehensible, which sometimes I find tiresome. But, hey, that’s my job!
The Foundations of My Journey
Before moving to the United States I was a preschool/English teacher in Colombia, and comparing my experience teaching English in Colombia vs teaching Spanish in the United States, it was easier for me to focus just on what I needed to communicate in English, than what is sometimes more complex for me in Spanish. I have had different experiences teaching in the United States, having been in a total of eight schools in 17 years. The first program where I taught FLES, all Spanish teachers were required to stay 100% in the TL. I had success doing all I could to get my point across in my classes. I spent a lot of time looking for visuals, making posters, and using a lot of TPR and gestures! The program was successful, but my students thought that I couldn’t speak English. The children were trying harder to communicate with me in the TL, but there was more to it than that. I had a website, and also sent newsletters home, but the parents still thought that I didn’t know English.
Trying to Find My Way
During my four years teaching in that school district, I was approached by a parent only once, and his comment was, “I thought you didn’t know English!” At that moment, I had mixed feelings. Yes, I wanted my students to use Spanish with me at all times, during class, recess time, in the hallway, and so on, but I was also sad, because I was also there to “promote bilingualism,” and they thought I only knew Spanish. I was traveling from classroom to classroom, and the homeroom teachers stayed in the classroom during the 20 minutes of Spanish instruction. I recall that I rarely had to work hard on classroom management because the teachers were there to help. I also realized that I didn’t really know anything about my students.
Seeing the Value of Teamwork and Mentors
Despite all of these critical reflections, I still learned so much there, where I learned so much about being a Spanish teacher in the United States. I had seven awesome colleagues who had been teaching for a long time, so they were always open to listening, and their classrooms were always open if I needed to learn more. They respected me and the strengths I brought to the table as a native Spanish speaker, and they mentored me, too. As a new immigrant at that time, they provided strong support! Those ladies shaped a lot of the teacher that I am today!
Forced to Change Course with Opportunity in Adversity
Sadly enough, the town voted against a tax override, and the school district lost the Spanish program. Spanish language instruction at the elementary level fell victim to other budget priorities. To this day, I still don’t understand why there is more emphasis on high school foreign language instruction than in the early years when it makes a lot more sense in so many ways. I did decide to create my own program targeting pre-K kiddos, but that’s another story! After a few years of working independently, I decided to go back to a school because I was really missing being part of a school community.
Growing More Flexible
Once I moved to a different school, the policies about teaching 100% in the TL were different. The school already had a Spanish and French teacher for grades 4 through 6, so I was hired to create the other part of the program with the help of my colleagues, and we used a backward mapping process to create our curriculum for grades pre-K to 3. Both of the French and Spanish teachers used some English with their students. Although I had a little flexibility to create the program, I first stuck strongly with using only Spanish in class out of habit and desire to push students to use the TL. I started noticing that the other language teachers had such strong connections with their students, and their students would actually look for them during recess time. That was when it dawned on me that I had been missing an opportunity to connect with my students and get to know a little bit more about them. So by my second year in the school, I finally became more flexible and started to allow interactions with my students in their L1 during times out of my class.
Building Deeper Relationships
Children would actually come and sit next to me by the bench on the playground, and we had great conversations, rom talking about my family in Colombia to their plans after school! That’s when I realized that it was okay for them to use their L1 to communicate with me during recess time. I also feel that because I am a native speaker, they need to know that I am bilingual and that I have interest in their language and culture. Keeping my class at 90 to 95 % TL in my classroom continues to be my goal.
Hitting My Stride and Learning the Value of Patient Beginnings
I am now in my third school (as FLES teacher), where the program is awesome! We have a seven-day cycle, and I get to see my students five out of every seven days. I can do so much with my students! And the consistency in our schedule definitely helps the program. In this school we spend the first days in English, in fact, nobody teaches any of the subjects because we spend the first days getting to know our students and making space for our students to get to know their teachers. This has been the best idea ever! Kudos to my school principal for encouraging us to start our school year this way. Last year was the first time it was done schoolwide, and it made a big difference in that it was an opportunity to connect with my students without the pressure of digging into my curriculum right away. During the first days we discussed classroom procedures, explored the space, and talked about the rules in class and how important it is to follow them to make it a safe space for everyone. We used TPR with the rules, and then it was easy to transition to using them (and TPR) in Spanish.
Honing My Craft and Holding Myself to the Same Standards
I keep the poster in front of the classroom to refer to the rules whenever I need them. I also teach hand signs that are connected to “passwords” they need in class. (See my post about “passwords” here.) I also have a poster that says “En español,” and I point at it when needed, and a hand sign that I use if I have to use English (Time out sign.) I usually use this sign and accompany it by saying “Voy a hablar…” and my students say “inglés.” If they have a question for me, they request permission to use English by asking “¿Puedo hablar inglés?” So I figured I also have to signal it when there is the need to use English from my end.
Weaving in Complexity and Culture
I try to keep my teaching at between 90% and 95% in the TL, and sometimes I actually have classes with the TL at 100%, but there are times when I feel that it is necessary to use my students’ L1. When teaching culture that goes beyond the tangible. They also see me taking risks with words that are difficult for me to pronounce. I am working hard on incorporating more culture into my classes and to be able to give voice to the different Spanish speaking cultures. They’re so diverse! My students already know enough about El Día de los Muertos, or La noche de las velitas, but if there is something new or unique, I’d rather use five minutes of my instruction time in English making sure everything is clear, than letting things go by and being responsible for inadvertently instilling or reinforcing stereotypes, however subtle..
Taking the Summer to Reflect on Reflections!
Writing this post has been so great to take the opportunity to reflect about my own journey and process as a language teacher. This is my own experience, and this is how I have arrived where I am right now with the use of TL in my classes. I know as teachers we have to look at what works best for us and most benefits our students. I am just happy to be able to share my own journey with you. I would love to hear what you do in your classes and learn about your journey and your own process of adaptation over time! Please feel free to add a note in the comments!
Nothing like being in the middle of a fun and engaging lesson when suddenly you have a student interrupting because he or she needs to go to the bathroom, or even worse, you have a student who you thought was raising his/her hand quietly for a while when you realized it was a request to go to the bathroom and the student had been holding it for a long time. Then the feelings of guilt flood in. Time is precious for teachers, but no one wants to cause a student pain!
I taught in a Responsive Classroom school, and using signs was part of the classroom management model. So I borrowed some ideas from the Responsible Classroom framework and have added more to fit the needs of my classroom. I also teach my students useful sentences to ask for permission to go to the bathroom or drink water in Spanish. There are times when I see the hand signal for bathroom but still ask them what they need to give them an opportunity to practice the language or I also say you need to go to the bathroom or drink water. Once I started using hand signals with my students, I felt that I was able to teach a class with less interruptions, and it was also helpful for the students who were not yet ready to use the target language. I now introduce hand signals during the first class, and we practice them to make sure that they are clear for everyone.
Recently I found a set of images that go perfectly with the hand signals I use, and I will be updating my classroom signs this fall. I am sharing them with you. I hope you find this helpful!
