20 Ideas for Navidad activities for Spanish class

I received an email from a colleague asking me for ideas for class on the last day before Christmas vacation.  I responded with five ideas, and then decided to write a last minute list of resources on my blog in case others are looking for ideas too.  There are so many choices available in addition to what is listed below that you could have several days of activities. Just make sure to keep it comprehensible!

The first suggestion has to be to let the students help you create a story via TPRS style.  If Santa Claus is something your students want to talk about, tell about the problems he encounters in different houses or choose your structures, start the story, and the students will take it from there, under your guidance of course.

Commercials (can use with MovieTalk):
- Santa vs. Los Reyes (thank you @mryedinak for sending me this link)

- Los padres no existen

- The Journey - The link will take you to Kieran Donaghy's blog, Film English. There is a video about snowmen, along with lesson plans in English that you can change to your language.  As always, his blog is PACKED with great lessons, so I suggest you free up some time and explore his website fully.

The Journey is a John Lewis advertisement from a previous year.  Find Christmas advertisements from this year and other years that are just as endearing HERE.

Stories in Spanish
- the app Bookbox (or find it online at Bookbox) has two audio stories with subtitles.  They are "La Navidad de Santa", and "La Primera Navida"

Food

Víctor - making buñuelos & snacking on Oreos

- Why not make buñuelos with your students? I made these with several times with my students because they're easy and delicious. This linked recipe uses a frypan but I also make them with my deep fryer.
 HERE is a variation with cheese.

- Ensalada de Buenanoche - I've never made this before but I saw it mentioned on a teaching forum last week.

- Rosca de Reyes - Click HERE to see a blog post by Carrie Toth that explains how she made this with her students last year.  Included especially for all the super ambitious teachers out there like Carrie.  :-)

Songs and Podcasts
 There are several versions of Juanes' El burrito de Belén on YouTube; or search for other traditional songs/villancicos.  One song my students enjoy when I take the Spanish club Christmas caroling (cancelled twice this year due to snow) is "Gatatumba". I did a google search and couldn't find a version with the words.  I have an old cassette tape from teacher's discovery from years ago that maybe, by chance, the previous Spanish teacher has stashed in a closet somewhere that you can listen to.

Most students have already heard the song Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano so it might be fun to sing along with a video of it. 

- Notes in Spanish podcasts, by Ben and Marina, have an several episodes related to Christmas:
Inspired Beginners: ¡Feliz Navidad! found HERE. 
Intermediate: La Lotería found HERE.
Advanced: Feliz Navidad found HERE.

- Audiria - Cómo celebran la Navidad los españoles, script included

Culture
- You may want to wait until January to show a video on The Three Kings Day/Día de los reyes magos.  HERE is a short clip in English.  I used a Spanish clip last year but I'm not sure which one.
- A few years ago I made a Powerpoint with multiple choice questions about Christmas time traditions in Spanish countries.  I put the students in groups of 3 and they discuss the answers among them and write them down.  After they have answered all the questions on the powerpoint, they switch their papers with another group. As I tell them the correct answers, I add information about the traditions.  It is a fun way to share a lot of information such as el gordo (la lotería), las posadas, new year's eve traditions (such as eating grapes or sweeping the house clean), and others.

BINGO - I'm not a big fan of Bingo because it is usually played with vocabulary only, out of context.  However, if it the last day before Christmas vacation, keeping students' attention can be extra challenging and this activity may fit the bill. You can personalize the vocabulary first by first teaching the words with TPR.

Resources
One word: PINTEREST!  Go to Pinterest and google Navidad and you'll find more than you can digest.  I suggest starting with Martina Bex's Navidad board found HERE.  


Other Activities
 - Years ago I printed pictures on cardstock and laminated them to represent the last words in each line of the "spanglish" version of Twas the Night Before Christmas that you can find HERE. Sometimes I take my class to the office or to a Spanish 1 class to perform the poem for them.
 

Having fun with IF Clauses

Through reading a novel in Spanish class, my students have seen the imperfect subjunctive many times.  To give them more exposure with the imperfect subjunctive, we did a quick activity with IF CLAUSES.

1. I wrote the typical sentence on the board...Si tuviera 5 millones de dólares, yo... and wrote possible answers.  I continued by writing the verbs only of other examples as I said the sentences, ...si hablara cinco idiomas, yo trabajaría...

- we discussed the second part of the sentence (the conditional) because they already had learned this the previous year of Spanish. Then I showed them how fuera, tuviera, hablara, durmiera, was formed, which took only a minute or two. Resist the temptation to show umpteen examples of irregular verbs - they don't need it know, nor do they want to hear it at this point. Keep the emphasis on communicating meaning.

2.  Then I gave each student two pieces of paper. On one paper they wrote the first part of the phrase using IF + imperfect subjunctive (but I didn't call if by that name); on the second paper that said what they WOULD do if the first part of the sentence were true or were to happen. I reminded them that I wanted interesting and creative sentences; boring sentences were not an option.

3. I collected the papers as two separate piles and redistributed them, making sure the original match was not together.

4. Students read their new sentences and we discussed or commented on each. It wasn't necessary for me to call on students to read their sentences - they wanted to read them to their classmates.

I'll let that activity digest a little and then approach the imperfect subjunctive from a different angle.

Now that's a good story....

I saw this commercial (see below) for the first time last night and my first thought was of the similarities to co-creating a story with students in a second language class.  As a teacher you have no idea of the outcome, but you know the students will be engaged to see how it all comes together...exactly like I was when watching the commercial.
Somebody at droid had their creative juices flowing freely. 

 

Robo en la noche - capítulo 4

Completed activity mentioned in #4-6 below.

My Spanish 2 students are currently reading Robo en la noche, a book written by Kristy Placido.  I've read this book before with my level 2 students, but this time I noticed that the students were struggling a bit, (a problem that I take the blame for due to the way I introduced the first two chapters - see the end of the post for more details).  

In order to give the students more exposure to the setting and the characters, I made an activity to complete after reading chapter 4.  Below is a brief detail of my plans for chapter 4.

1. Before reading chapter 4, review the characters in chapters 1-3 by completing and/or talking about the information the graphic organizer (found HERE).
2. Students copy a list on the board (see below) in order to read with a purpose (to find the listed information in chapter 4 as we are reading it together):
    A. 2 lugares donde ocurre la acción en el capítulo
    B. 4 hechos/información sobre Cecilio
    C. 2 hechos sobre las aves
    D. 2 hechos sobre Costa Rica
    E. 2 dichos (sayings and/or slang) en Costa Rica
As I read the chapter, students raised their hand when they found information listed in A,B,C,D or E and then they all wrote the information in their composition books.
3.  PQA and discussion of different parts of the chapter
4.  After completing the chapter I distributed page 1 and 2 on the file attached below.  Students had to cut out the squares and put the events in the correct order.  I checked them before they glued them to sheet #1.

 
5. Give students the 3rd sheet, printed on a different color.  They cut the squares with the sentence dialogues and matched them to the 11 different events in the chapter.  Note: The exact dialogue on the small squares is NOT taken from the book.  Students had to read the sentences and decide which person may have said that.  They glued these to the paper after I checked them.
6. Finally, on the small squares with the sentence dialogues, they needed to write the name of the person that would have said the statement.
7. As students finished the  activity, they decided when they were ready to take a comprehension quiz on the chapter.  It was a 10 point multiple choice quiz which I graded with my new app Quick Key.  (22 quizzes graded in less than a minute - not too shabby).

I'm not a big advocate of taking class time to do a cut and paste activity, but when students order events, it's helpful to be able to physically move the events around to order them.

A huge plus with this activity today was when I arrived at school and realized it was the first day of Keystone testing.  My first class was scheduled to be in my classroom for 2 hours.  Cutting and pasting helped to break up the long class period and allowed the students to work at their own pace.

The main reason why students may be having more difficulty with the book this time is that I was went to ACTFL in Orlando and in an attempt to leave behind lesson plans that were productive...I had the students read the first two chapters with the substitute.  Now I know not to do that in a level 2 or below class.  They definitely need the guidance when reading, especially for the first few chapters of the book. 

 

Quick Key App - a Time-Saver

Two words that can save you time with your school work are:

Quick Key

Quick Key is an app created by Walter O. Duncan IV (@4_teachers) to help teachers quickly grade short assessments like Ticket Out the Door or quizzes.

I found the app in a round-about way from Twitter (just another reason why Twitter is a key part of my PLN). After I downloaded the app, I printed a few QK Tickets, (scantron sheets), and started working with the app. I added a list of names, assigned them to a class, made the answer key on the app, and filled in several student answer sheets. (Thanks to @4_teachers for sending me a direct link to the Quick Key Tickets; find them HERE)

I used my iPad to scan the QK tickets, but initially I had problems because my printout of the scantron sheet was not good quality.  My printer at home is set to conserve ink and it did not print dark enough for the app to work.  I mentioned this on Twitter to @4_teachers (Walter O. Duncan IV) and it was not long until he responded, confirming that the scantron sheet needs to be good quality.   

After I reset the printer settings, I printed two new QK Tickets, filled in the bubbles, and this time used my iPhone to scan the sheets, and voila, in seconds the app had graded the scantron sheets. 

Quick Key can be used in the Ci-based classes to ask information about the story students helped to create, to check reading comprehension when using mini-novels, match statements to sketches of the story, or even include questions related to pop-up grammar that was explained in the story or chapter.

One thing I failed to mention, the app is FREE! (at least for the time being)

ACTFL Presentation: Increasing TL Communication w/ Film Shorts & Comprehensible Input

Last Saturday, at the ACTFL 2013 convention in Orlando, FL,  I presented a session entitled "Increasing TL Communication w/ Film Shorts & Comprehensible Input".  A copy of the handout is available to view or for download below.  It's not as visually attractive as the powerpoint with embedded videos, but the information is the same.

Thank you to those that supported me by attending the session.  It was reassuring to see members of my PLN from #langchat in my session that I met for the first time at ACTFL.  It was my first time presenting and their support meant the world to me. 

  

No prep Thanksgiving activities for Spanish class

The day before Thanksgiving vacation the students have one goal in mind: get through the day so they can start their vacation. I know this because I've heard it from several students in my homeroom group and other classes.

The regular plans may need to be put on hold, but that doesn't mean you have to turn to simple games like Bingo. Another popular activity is for students to write things they are thankful on turkeys' feathers. They have the cuteness factor, but I suggest you make it more meaningful by increasing the comprehensible input and increase class discussion as Sra. Yedinak explains HERE.

I had several activities ready to go that took no or minimal planning but were in the target language and required student engagement.

1.  Estoy agradecido por.  Students moved their chairs into a circle. I wrote the following on the board: Estoy agradecido por...,  Estoy agradecida por..., está agradecido/a por...
I randomly pulled a student's name from index cards (or use a random name generator) and that student moved into the chair designated as #1. The student originally seated there moved into the seat of the students that was called. The student in chair #1 had to say for what they were thankful. (i.e. Estoy agradecida por mis hermanas.) Then I pulled a second name and that student moved into the seat next to the first student and said for what the first person was thankful and then added for what they were thankful.  We continued this for 15 students.

Even if there are more than 15 students in the class, going through this 15 times is plenty. My rule was that any student that had already said for what they were thankful decided to chat with another student, they had to move to the end of the line and repeat what each person had said.  There was a united sigh from the remaining students when after the 15th person's name was called.

To end the activity, the students wrote 5 sentences about what 5 of their classmates had said and for sentence #6, they wrote for what they were thankful.  I kept the notes on the board as they wrote. I didn't want it to be a tricky exercise, but rather one in which they heard "Estoy/está agradecido/a por" over 100 times.  This worked well and I didn't have to quiet the students even one time!

2. Infografía: El pavo, sabor y nutrición para Fin de Año. This infograph is not made specifically for Thanksgiving, but it still works for Thanksgiving.  I used this with my Spanish 4 class for a short activity.  I projected the infograph on the board and simply asked them to tell me information in English from the infograph.  As they called out information, I used a marker to put a check on that information.
I find this the evening before the class, and I can't remember if I saw it on someone's blog or if I saw it on Pinterest.  The link to the infografía is HERE. 

3. Another short activity on vocabulary related to Thanksgiving is on Quia.  Just google "Quia - Día de acción de gracias", and you'll find several shared activities or click HERE to choose matching, concentration, or 2 other choices. I did the matching only but if I had had the ipads in my class, I may have considered having them pair up to play a round of concentration.

It would have been easy to include the Thanskgiving theme into a story, but the students appreciated the change of pace. I saved enough time in our 70 minute block to read another chapter in our leveled reader. 

UPDATE: Two days after I posted this I found this post by Señora Pelirroja (@SraPelirroja) on her blog Classroom Creativities.  It DOES take prep time but it is a cute idea.  If I had seen this at the beginning of November, I would have planned for my students to do this activity before I went to ACTFL so other students could appreciate it for a few weeks.

Student-created stories w/ guidance

A quick way to assess if your students have internalized structures is to have them give a short presentation.  I limit these type of activities for the beginning levels, but I used the following as an informal assessment (i.e. not graded) to help me know how to structure the pacing of future classes.  

1. Structures and Vocabulary: 
- él no se despertó = he didn't awaken 
- él se durmió = he fell asleep
- cuando él tren (or el autobús, or el avión) llegó

2. Ask personalized questions to students using the above structures (mostly whether they fall asleep in certain classes, at sports practice, at music recitals, and when they awoke that day).

3.  Class helped to create story by giving details for the following storyline:
someone wanted to go somewhere and why, how they went there, where they didn't awaken, where they awoke and how they felt.

4. After students helped create the class story, the students wrote the story in their writing journals (I wrote it on the board as they retold it to me and they copied it) or they read a previous class's story.

5. The following day we read two stories from the previous year. This is the 3rd semester I have taught Spanish 2 in recent years, so I am accumulating a nice amount of stories by previous classes that are useful for additional comprehensible reading.

6. We also watched a similar story on Educreations that I made about last year's class story.  

7. After those activities, I made a last minute change in my lesson plans and added an activity for students to create and present their own stories.
I wrote the following on the board (in Spanish for students,  but it's listed in English for blog purposes)
- Name of the person
- where did they want to go and why
- what transportation did they use
- after how long did they fall asleep
- where was the bus/train/airplane when the person didn't awaken
- where did the person awaken and how did s/he feel

Students worked in groups of two.  Each person had half a sheet of paper (torn lengthwise) and 10 minutes to create the sketches and practice their stories. Even though I told them to only use words they already knew, some didn't follow that advice, so while they were working, if they asked me how to say something, I wrote that on the board and the students had to point to that word and pause when they were presenting to make their presentations comprehensible to their classmates.

After 10 minutes they presented their stories to the class with the use of the document camera; no written notes, guided only by their sketches. In both classes, several groups quickly volunteered to take their turn, eager to share their stories with their classmates.   

The benefits:
- It was easy for me to assess their progress on the target structures (a nice surprise was how well they were pronounced the words; but a few still stumbled on the pronunciation)
- The students were engaged. I didn't need to remind them to listen or pay attention.
- The structure wanted to + action (ex: wanted to go to Hollywood because he wanted to see the starts) was used in the story; a good review for many.

Two examples of students' stories and sketches:

Patricia quería ir al centro comercial porque quería comprar ropa nueva.  Ella fue a la estación de autobuses y se sentó en el asiento. Ella se durmió inmediatamente. Cuando el autobús llegó al centro comercial, ella no se despertó.  Ella se despertó cuando el autobús llegó a Goodwill.  Patricia estaba contenta porque podía comprar mucha ropa en Goodwill.

 Tim vivía en Harrisburg. Él quería ir a Hawaii.  Tim quería nadar con tiburones.  Él fue al aeropuerto y fue a Hawaii.  Él se durmió en el avión y no se despertó cuando el avión llegó en Hawaii.  El avión regresó al aeropuerto en Harrisburg.  Tim se despertó en Harrisburg.  Estaba furioso porque quería nadar con tiburones y no había tiburones en Harrisburg.


Why is it that many times the best activities I do in class are the ones that are last minute (literally, last minute - as in the idea pops in my mind during class) additions to my lesson plans.  I'm glad that those last minute changes often go well, but it is frustrating that, in comparison, some things I spend a considerable amount of time working on and preparing for class, end with less than pleasing results!

Learning (Spanish) Commands - Usted Form

Students write commands to solve problems.

Note: This is also known as a Commands Gallery Walk

I use a fabricated story about my cat when I teach formal commands.  The activity is described below for how I teach it in Spanish, but it can easily be adapted to any language.

I begin by telling the following story in the Target Language about my cat: "My cat loves to hunt and every day it hunts and kills either a bird or a mouse. But my cat doesn't like to eat what it hunts so it picks up the kill in it's mouth, walks to my neighbor's house, and drops it's hunted prize at the front door of my neighbor's house.  My neighbor is very angry with me and my cat." Then students say commands in the usted form to tell me what to do.

This year I decided to have the students create their own short scenarios.  

1. The students wrote their fabricated "problems" on a large paper and hung them around the room. I limited their stories to 5-7 sentences.

2. Then I gave each student a pack of post-it notes.  

un problema con un caimán

3. Students had to write a command for each of the "problems" and stick their post-it note to the paper.  They could not repeat any verbs already mentioned on other post-it notes on the paper, and the individuals could not use the same verb on more than one paper.  (I had 15 students in class, each had to write commands on post-its for 14 of the "problems", they did not have to write on their own paper, and the student could only use a verb one time.)

4. After the students have written a command and put post-it notes on all the papers except their own, the owner of the paper reads the commands and chooses the 3 they like the most to share with the class.

The students enjoy listening to their classmates' "problems" and the creative ways to solve the problem.  Having the students write on post-it notes instead of directly on the paper meant students didn't have to wait until the previous person was finished writing on the paper, a time-saver.  

Update 2017: Recently in my inbox from Pinterest, there were photos of suggested pins for my Spanish boards. One was a Pin that used my idea but instead of the students creating a problem, the teacher wrote the problem and put it in a clear protector sheet and then students added the sticky notes as described in this post.  I added the picture I found on Pinterest to give you a clear picture how it was done. I'm unable to give a photo credit because the Pin on pinterest leads to a dead end. 

Teaching Idea Inspired by Ellen DeGeneres

Inspiration for classroom activities can be found in so many places, including The Ellen DeGeneres show.  I'm not sure how my web browsing led me to videos of The Ellen Show a few weekends ago, but on the right of YouTube page I saw the title, "Ellen and Jennifer Lopez Dance-Off" (click on title to see the video).

True to Ellen's style, she made the Dance-Off look fun, and I started thinking how I could use something similar with my students.  While an identical "dance-off" would be fun, it certainly wouldn't be related to the curriculum. However, last weekend when I was planning out the week's activities, I wanted a quick review of how to say s/he was doing something, by using estaba + gerund (ex: estaba nadando, estaba escribiendo, estaba bailando), and I decided now was the time to use a variation of Ellen's activity. 

I made a powerpoint for a fun warm-up, but it would also work great as a brain-break because it is quick and it gets the students up and moving around.  The directions for the activity are on the #2 slide below. The link to the powerpoint is HERE.

Gracias Ellen

Novels and Classroom Door Decorations

I am going to assume that reading novels in second language classes is increasing.  I say that because the number of downloads I've seen in the last few months for materials I have on this blog for a few of the books I've read with my students continues to increase.

For those of you that enjoying making bulletin boards, the following idea may be just for you.  Why not decorate your classroom door to coordinate with the novel you are reading with one of your classes?  It will catch the other students' attention in your school, it will add a little pizzazz to your hallway, and it will be a daily reminder to your students that you are reading a novel in the class.

Below are a few photos of doors I found online - some on Pinterest and some by googling "classroom doors".  

       
You could do this with any novel you read with your students, or even decorate your door for a particular unit.  Those great decorations don't have to stay inside your room!  

The doors for the novels shown above are just a sampling of the great novels available for language teachers.  If you're looking for materials, check the right side of my blog and you'll find links to Mira Canion and TPRS Publishing where you can find the above books and many others.

I know, it's just another thing that will take time that you really don't have in the first place.  I like the idea, but I haven't decorated my door yet.  However, some of the more crafty teachers out there may find this suits them perfectly.

  

¡Bienvenidos a Nelly Hughes!

I want to officially welcome Nelly Hughes as a new contributor/writer to this blog!  

Nelly is a talented high school Spanish teacher, presenter and TPRS/CI coach. I connected with Nelly through Twitter and shortly after we started to share ideas on teaching and sharing resources with each other.

Nelly and I met in person for the first time in Dallas at the NTPRS conference. That's when I discovered that Nelly was a wonderful, generous person, willing to share ideas and her time to help others to improve their teaching skills (especially in TPRS/CI methods) on the path to become better teachers.

Since the conference, Nelly and I have stayed in close contact with each other, discussing ideas on how to teach the same mini-novel we taught this fall, sharing resources and materials, and bouncing ideas off of each other.  An example of Nelly's work, a document on the song, "Mi novio es un zombi", can be found HERE.  

Earlier this week, Nelly sent more documents to me that she created to use in her classroom.  That's when I suggested that she do one of the following things:
1 - start a blog so she can share her materials with others easily
2 - create the documents on Googledocs and tweet the URL of the document
3 - open an account on TeachersPayTeachers. I no very little about the regulations for joining, but for those that want to share materials but not necessarily charge for them, I have seen items on that site that are free downloads.
OR....
4 - accept my invitation to be a Contributor to my blog.

I'm pleased to say Nelly accepted my invitation to be a Contributor to the blog! You can find her name on the right of the blog under Contributors, along with Krista Applegate, a colleague at my school, whom I encourage (or...coerce) to write about the activities she uses with her French and Latin students.

Check back in the near future to see Nelly's first post and subsequent posts on her classroom activities and accompanying materials.