Minute by Minute Spanish – Spanish Lessons

Spanish Teacher Dilemma – Creating Comprehensible Input for All when All Have Varying Comprehension Experiences and Skills

September 10, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

What you can do to make Comprehensible Input truly Comprehensible for classes with a Wide Variety of Comprehension Experiences.

A teacher asked, “How do you keep CI truly comprehensible when some students come from previous teachers who used mostly English, some students from previous teachers who used Spanish but in such a way that students didn’t understand and tuned out, and some students from previous teachers who use the target language and can follow along?”

I teach such a class of Spanish One, part Two to eighth graders!

I am a big believer in providing engaging visual and audio and musical CI in every lesson every day. I script the lesson in what I call a daily tech guide.

I make a flip chart for each day and provide visual slides for each activity. (You can use PPT, Smart, Active Inspire, whatever projects onto your board.)

I insert a musical transition video before each activity and soon students are using the words in the videos to express themselves. We are able to stay in the target language because those who had teachers last year who didn’t use Spanish that much in the classroom rely on the visual for cues, those who heard Spanish but didn’t understand read the words to the videos, and those accustomed to hearing classroom Spanish rely on listening to the videos.

I have them check in with their seat partner for understanding.

_85 Chequeen con tu compañeroT from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

It levels the playing ground!

I use a clicker or remote mouse to be anywhere in the room during the lesson.

This remote will change lives! — This remote will free you to walk around the room and stand strategically behind challenging students. It changes lives!

If you want to see some examples of my lessons, try these links.

Videos of First Week’s Lessons

Videos of different classes.

If you want to see how to structure your lesson using the transition videos, go here.

You can help some starving Venezuelans — All net proceeds go to help three Venezuelan Families to survive their economic crises.

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Spanish Class Password Frase Secreta Frase de la Semana Video to Introduce Concept and Stay in TL

September 10, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Many Spanish teachers build a sense of community by using a special phrase or word as a password to enter the classroom. Each week teachers introduce a different one. They do so in the target language by playing our 27 second video to transition into the announcement of our next ‘frase secreta de la semana’ – your students will quickly grasp what to do and will remember to note the latest one when they hear the music. It also provides the vocabulary for those who don’t know the secret phrase – see lyrics below.

La Frase Secreta – Profesora from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

Click here to purchase female teacher version.

Click here to purchase male teacher version

Here are links to different Spanish ideas if you are looking for inspiration for Passwords.

Spanish Proverbs

40 Beautiful Words in Spanish

Tongue twisters for more advanced students

Top Ten Foods From Spain for Food Unit

Top Ten Beaches in Spain

For more ideas, Bryce Hedstrom has written a book on Passwords.

Spanish Teachers’ Phone Policy for Gen Z When Admin Refuses to Create a Uniform Policy.

July 28, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Transition Videos tell the students what to do in a fun, catchy way that minimizes oppositional defiance issues.

T’is the tricky season for setting your phone policy for the year if you teach in a school where rules aren’t enforced. FaceBook pages for teachers are filled with some teachers talking about their phone caddies while other teachers lament that their school won’t support them because of legal liabilities for the phone. Socio-economics plays a part here – many of my students can’t afford phones and the public display of who has and who doesn’t have a phone can be humiliating.

It is tricky because the students in your class were born watching their parents use their cell phones as watches, as agendas, as cameras, as dictionaries, as calculators and as help raising them. It is trickier because in my seventh and eighth grade classes, the people texting my students are . . . their parents. Parents are comfy texting their children all day long and don’t wait to see their children at the end of the day to talk about what happened. This is such a problem that I wrote a blog about the damage this causes.

Putting away the phones can be the new battleground for testing the teacher’s authority, and a daily struggle for teachers who have students with oppositional defiance issues. But last year, I finally accepted their love for their phones and made it part of the routine of putting them away and taking them out.

What a difference it makes for the video to be telling them to put them away and not me! It removes me from being the target of defiance as students all jokingly urge one another to say goodbye.

It has become such a routine that my phone issue went away. I make a daily flip chart or slide show for my class. I insert a slide for each activity we do and transition videos such as the phone videos in between the slides. I use a remote mouse or presentation device (“clicker”) so I can be anywhere in the room.

Here is my blog of all of my transition videos.

Stay on task and in the target language by having students put away their phones.

5 Messages You Must Convey to Parents at “Back-To-School Night” or “Open House”

July 26, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Back-to-School Nights can fly by in a blur. At our school, on Back-to-School Night, teachers have 10 minutes per class with parents. Use this time wisely. Don’t squander these minutes on technical information easily conveyed in a brochure, or by teaching a lesson in the target language — you have five more important messages to convey that will improve your relationship with parents for the rest of the year.

You want to convey you are personable, friendly, human, and that they can trust you. Later on in the year, if there is an issue, you have laid the ground work that they approach you first with a problem or a complaint, not your boss.

After a brief sketch of my background and the advantages of learning Spanish, I mention my personal experience. I tell them about scholarships I have won, and how their child can also win scholarships, based on language skills. I share when I have made more money because of my language skills. Money catches their interest! I tell them how much I love teaching seventh grade right up until February when these twelve-year-olds turn into teenagers. I wink, we have a good laugh, I ask if the teenage alien has already entered their home, I have over 200 a day! See, I’m personable!

You must convey to them that you are the expert on this age group, compared to them. Even if you are a second year teacher throw out your statistic.

I spend a few minutes educating parents about adolescents and I assert my expertise with this age group. I tell them that in my experience of teaching more than 2,000 students in this age group, (here I pause and joke that I have the gray hair to prove it but you want it to sink in. Yah, they have two kids but you’ve had X amount in this age group.) I’ve seen some seventh graders try out some new—and undesirable—behaviors: lying and cheating.

Many parents are relieved when I depersonalize this shocking behavior. I reap many benefits throughout the year from this, as parents are more likely to admit their children’s mistakes to a teacher who doesn’t perceive these behaviors as a reflection of their parenting.

One unexpected behavior may be lying about homework, so I explain how I daily input grades into the grading program. I can help them put the app on their phones if that would help them to track their child’s actual homework turned in versus what they are told. Another lie may be that I haven’t handed back their make-up tests. My policy is to update grades and return them every Tuesday. (This slows down the compulsive parents who check grades online several times a day.)

I wrote 12 pages in my book about what teachers of other grades want parents to know. See below if you need more information.

You must convey to parents to talk with you privately if something feels odd.

I tell them this, “If your child is trying to convince you of something that sounds unbelievable, email me to give you a call and we can figure out what is going on. Your child doesn’t have to know that you and I talked about the story that Mrs. Shrager is so old that every day she forgets to give me credit for my homework.”

4.You must educate parents that their high school teachers will be writing college recommendations about the soft issues, including honesty.

If your parents are like my parents, the thought of their child having good grades but lousy recommendations terrifies them. You can learn how to talk to parents about the Common App letter of recommendation below. Teachers love having this information to help parents see the importance of correcting behavior issues in their class.

5. You must convey that languages are learned not just taught, and you have practice available whenever their child needs help, at their time convenience.

I tell them that I have quizlet games every week for practice that can be played on their child’s phone while on the bus to a sporting event. I also tell them that my job is to give them a love of learning Spanish which I do through music, current events, and by preparing 100 slides a day with my daily tech guide for visual support so that we can conduct the lesson in Spanish. I ask how many have heard their children singing one of our songs already? If time, I show a minute video of the class singing a song. Parents love it and we end on a high loving note.

Prepare your presentation, use your time wisely to reap benefits all year long from it and enjoy Back-to-School night.

This post is a condensed version of one of the sections from my book, Teacher Dialogues. Available at Amazon.