Shhhhhh. it's a secret! First day activities!

So, here's my little secret. My first day of class will not consist of me struggling through names, strictly reading my syllabus and rules, or anything else that has to do with "housekeeping," unless it is requested by a student.

Here is what I will be doing on my first day Spanish 1 classes.

First, we do a little movement and input activity. Yes! My goal is always to start my classes in Spanish. So we will start by finding a partner or group.... Here are some of the find a partner sentence ideas (you may have to invent some based on what you see in your classroom). You might want to have a few pictures prepared to demonstrate a word more efficiently. The most important rule of this activity is that no one gets left out ever (oh oops am I sneaking a classroom expectation in here...maybe :)

So here we go:
- Look for a group that has the same color...
       shirt
       shoes
       hair
       socks
       backpack
-Look for a group that writes with the same hand as you
- Look for a group that writes with the same writing thing you write with (pen or pencil)


- Which do you prefer....
      cats vs. dogs
      pop vs. country music
      plants vs. pets
      being inside vs. being outside
      running vs. swimming

Ok, after this activity, which I will keep snappy, short, and focused we will play a name game, Where students will practice the basic introduction of "my name is" "what is your name." We will practice this phrasing while wandering the room forming groups. Finally, we will go around the classroom and see who can say everybody's name (if there is time).

What will your first day of class look like?

Back to School:Ice Breaker Activities for Early Intermediate/Beginning Students

In my last blog post, I discussed some of my favorite first week ice breakers for Intermediate/advanced students. I do however, think that it is equally as important to get students who are just beginning the language to speak and feel comfortable in class. Again, I must stress that I think it is especially important that the teacher participates with the student to set the correct tone. Here are some of the activities that I use in the first week of school.

Circle/action Name game: I have my students sit in a circle. Then I model a few times for them, Me llamo _____ , como te llamas, and se llama ____. Then I say my name is ______ and do an action for something that I like to do. The next student will say my name is _____, and her name is ______. and will his/her name with an action for himself, and then say my name with my action. This ice breaker allows each student to say everyone's name, and allows students to move! Another added benefit is that by the end of the activity, most students have a decent grasp on mine name is___ , his/her name is___ I try to finish the game, which is a good way for me to test whether or not I have learned each student's name. I do insert gentle recasts if a student is struggling with the pronunciation.

Trainwreck or fruteria: I have heard this ice breaker called many names. It is basically like a verbal musical chairs. Remove a chair from the circle of desks (or chairs are even better). One student stands in the middle of the circle and says a mi y todos mis amigos nos gusta(n) ______. Every student who likes said object has to get up and switch chairs. Students may not just move over a chair. The student who does not get a chair, is the next person in the middle. With very beginning students, I usually write the first part of the sentence on the board "a mi y todos mis amigos nos gusta(n) _____. I will allow the very beginners to say what they like in English, but I supply the Spanish word for them. Students are often surprised (and relieved) to hear how many cognates there are in Spanish. An added benefit includes students getting early exposure to gustar.

Quien tiene?: With Middle School or upper elementary students, I will often play a game, I simply call quien tiene. This activity requires a coin or other small object. All of the students stand in a circle. One student leaves the room, and the rest of the students pass the coin around in a circle until I call para! The student who has the coin then hides it in their hand or, if the students are sitting in desks, every student places their palms flat on the desk. The student who left the room is called back into the classroom, and everyone asks in chorus Quien tiene la moneda? The student has three chances to guess. For each guess the student should say ________ tiene la moneda. If a student doesn't know another students' name, he or she is encouraged to use como te llamas?

I will sometimes also have students make lists of cognates or words that they already know if Spanish. For example, I may challenge them to make a list of US states that have Spanish or Spanish derrived names. Or, city street names (depending on where you live). Once again, the purpose is to make the foreign language not seem quite so foreign and to activate connections in students' brains.

What are your favorite ice breakers for beginning and early intermediate students?

Projects in Spanish I

While my school leans towards the more traditional paper/pencil tests, I try to incorporate projects for our major themes, as I think that they are extremely valuable for students on a number of levels. First, I fully get to be the "guide on the side," as opposed to the "sage on the stage," which is a philosophy that I completely agree with. Second, students often push themselves to use new words or grammatical structures in order to accomplish the task, and that is part of learning how to learn a language, and third, students consolidate and use the information that they have learned in a meaningful way. So, this year in Spanish I, we have completed the following projects:

1) Fashion show and fashion blogger to accompany our clothing unit. The students "fashion blogged" about trends and pictures that they found on the internet. I encouraged my male students to look at their favorite sports stars. A plus to this project is that students were really excited to learn adjectives such as gross, or amazing. 

2) Ideal house project (the guide and rubric are on my TPT store). Students write about and create their ideal house using house, place, and preposition vocabulary. 

3) Create a restaurant and commercial projects. The students made a commercial on healthy living and created their own restaurant. 

4) Ideal student or ideal athlete project. Students described what the ideal student or ideal athlete "has to do" in order to maintain their abilities. 

In the upcoming weeks, we will start the preterit tense, so I am contemplating having the students create a "day in the life of a ____ student" video. The narration could all be in the past tense, and my students would most certainly enjoy the excuse to use their phones at school! 

What are your favorite projects? 

What Can They Read?

I find this time of year challenging for many reasons in my Spanish I class. The students are anxious for some sun and exercise, and they begin to lose their enthusiasm for language class, as the novelty of the material has begun to wear off. Some of them are beginning to feel frustrated by the fact that they can't speak fluently (certainly an unrealistic goal, but one that many people in the US seem to have), and others are frustrated that they still don't understand one of the topics that we have covered. To beat some of the winter blah's I try to have my students read more. Reading authentic texts both allows them to connect with the target culture, and I find that it can create some enthusiasm as the students know that they aren't reading "baby texts."

Here are some of the items that we read in my class: menus, real estate advertisements, subtitles on commercials such as car and household appliances, where students can quickly see cognates like velocidad. Other slightly more challenging reads include: riddles, tweets and facebook posts. Then, for the students who are really certain that they can't learn Spanish and never will, I will pull in articles on teen perspective from People in español and articles from National Geographic children. Hopefully even the most reluctant student is now feeling more inspired about his or her abilities.

While I know that I am still starting small, I find that students can figure-out the majority of the meaning of each of the above items, when scaffolded and encouraged. Take riddles for example, many of them actually include rather simple vocabulary and the answer is often a simple word as well!

Articles from People and National Geographic can be more challenging. I admit that I have had greatest success with the ones from National Geographic, as I can choose articles that relate to science information that the students already know. Additionally, many scientific words are cognates in English so students can often recognize the majority of the words in a passage without needing to look-up key terms.

Once my students have read an article, obviously we need to do something with it. I find that making graphs, charts, Venn diagrams, or word webs are all realistic tasks for a level one student. Sometimes, I will have the students survey their classmates as to which product they would buy, if we read advertisements. These tasks do not ask them to produce complex language structures, nor do they need tons of vocabulary.

What do you do to beat the winter blahs? What do your students read?