Weather matches the lesson

File photo from winter 2011-12

I planned today's lesson before our Thanksgiving break, which was a week ago. Some of the new structures for today included: 
hace frío = it's cold
hay mucha nieve = there is a lot of snow
está nevando = it is snowing
We also had 3 new clothing words: el gorro (hat); la chaqueta (jacket) & los mitones (mittens).

As luck would have it, the first snowfall of the winter season greeted us this morning and it was still snowing when I taught both my Spanish 1 classes.

Because I'm feeling crunched for time, we didn't stray much from the story I had previoulsy typed during the "story-asking".  At one point in the lesson, I decided to pause and ask the students to think of reasons why the boy in the story is surprised (está sorprendido).  They worked in groups of 2 or 3 to think of a sentence and then shared them with the class.  I was so impressed with their answers because the majority of them were complicated, compound sentences filled with adjectives and prepositions, AND they were grammatically correct.  

At the end of the story they each wrote another sentence on the paper with the typed story to say why the boy was surprised again.

This link will take you to the story if you care to read it. The words in this lesson will help prepare the students to watch the video ALMA which I showed to my Spanish 1 students last fall and was a big hit with them.  We need one more day of learning several vocabulary words and then we'll be ready for video....finally!