Documenting Participation Points for Hundreds of Spanish Class Students
A teacher asked, “Does anyone have an idea for weekly participation like bell ringers that can be easily collected or stamped? I have almost 200 kids and it’s a lot! I want to motivate them to speak and participate…”
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Spanish Curriculum for Middle School Rotation Classes
A teacher asked for brain-storming on teaching 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes for 30 lessons, for 42 minutes a lesson.
The first question is traditional or creative out-there lessons?
Let’s start with 6th grade traditional being about “an introduction to the introduction of Spanish” as requested by the principal.
Sixth Grade
Use slides do a recap/review of prior before starting new Spanish.
2 days Greetings day 1 slides /gusta with cognates/classroom commands 2 days start countries and capitals
3 and 3 days Countries and Capitals (song/map/flags/ eres de/soy de guessing games – 3 days South America 3 days Central America towards end of month)
3 days Colors numbers 1 – 10 2 days song/ touching items/ guessing/ math problems/phone numbers/classroom items
2 days Days of the week 1 – 2 days with yesterday/today/tomorrow
2 days Cognates and endings lots of food items matching picture to Spanish words
4 days Body parts Simon says, drawing strange monsters, charades students love this!
4 days basic weather recycling countries and their weather and flags coloring flag to represent country and weather.
4 days basic breakfast items to go along with culture and ordering breakfast kids love food!
= 27 classes and 3 classes for assessments/ usual interruptions
Seventh Grade
Using slides do a recap/review of prior before starting new Spanish
3 days Review
5 days Expand numbers to 31 – using math and classroom items
4 days Months and dates
5 days expand numbers to 60
3 days Telling digital time
5 days Classroom items and survival vocabulary
= 25 classes and 5 classes for assessments/usual interruptions
(start each class with pre-class of lo veo/lo pienso/me pregunto with cultural images )
(last 15 minutes video of country/typical dessert activity 20 minutes of culture and 22 minutes of Spanish if you want)
Eighth Grade
Review (5 classes)
Infinitives with gusta (5 classes with recycling)
Family (5 classes)
Dinner Restaurant (5 classes)
Clothing (5 classes)
= 25 classes and 5 classes for assessments/usual interruptions
What would be an alternative to the traditional?
7th Grade spend most of the time learning how to order meals in a restaurant while teaching about different foods from different countries.
8th Grade spend most of the time learning how to travel to other countries and places to visit.
Contact me at ellen@minutebyminutespanish.com if you would like to explore these ideas further!
Good luck with creating your curriculum.
Check-off List for Substitute Teacher (s) during Substitute Shortages
During our nationwide substitute-teacher shortage, we can no longer count on one person to cover all of our classes.
After giving two months notice for a medical appointment, I left my usual sub letter and plans only to return to no notes and no names as to who covered which class.
To avoid future aggravation, I created this additional form that you can download here.
If you need asynchronous Spanish lessons so that students can work independently with substitutes that don’t know Spanish, please consider my cultural lessons below.
Cultural Activities:
Colombia Hidden Pictures.mp4 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
We have eight so far with four more in progress.
REVIEW LESSONS:
INTRODUCE NEW VOCABULARY:

Spanish Teacher Summer Prep to “Just Prep During Your Prep” during the New School Year
Summer is so precious.
Last year was so insane. Take one hour to learn 5 Sanity Savers for this upcoming year and enjoy the freebies!
5 STEP CHALLENGE
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