1. Use a daily tech guide (slideshow) – my version will be sent in the 5 step challenge below.  

             Each day copy and paste your structure and change out the activities – at the end of the year you will have 180 slide shows and be set up for next year.  Insert Spanish transition videos and your students will stay on task and in the target language. Want more info?  click here

2. Redefine teaching bell – to – bell for Spanish 1 and Spanish 2.

             Each period is a complete entity – you and the students walk out with whatever needs to be scored being scored – except for writing assessments. You need to structure  your class so that there is time for grading for completion and in-class work and quickly recording the grades.

            In the daily tech guide is a musical slide for taking attendance.  Insert attendance into the school’s program in the moment. We use Skyward and I take attendance on my phone with the students helping me with “X no está” as they learn it from the transition videos.

          Whatever work the students are doing, show the answers on the board, and circulate for corrections.  They take a picture of it with their chrome books and submit it on the first slide of the day’s work. (On the other slides are there listening and reading activities.)  I teach from one monitor and use the second monitor to pull up their work and check for completion during little moments – while the are listening to an audio, listening to the text’s grammar videos, working with their partners, etc.  If their work has multiple slides, I can glance at them all at once rather than rolling through each slide. Some teachers have the last 5 minutes of class be practicing on Quizizz while they record and verify with students who didn’t hand in work.  They can be receiving comprehensible input from vocabulary and listening activities without  you physically doing it, and that is ok.

                For Google Classroom, I score them and can record them in Skyward.  Then I go back and remove the due date.  This way parents do not receive messages about incomplete work.  In Google, they only receive messages about work with a due date.  Granted, in Skyward it is recorded and determines their final grade, but parents seem to focus on items that crop up in their reminder list.  This had virtually eliminated students goofing off in class, not doing the work, and then their parents demanding that they re-do for a better grade.  Your goal is to start looking at moments when you could be checking and recording grades, while students are practicing and listening and watching.

3. In all of your info home refer to your prep time as “office hours” as in I will return phone calls and emails during my office hours 10:10 – 10:55.  

4. Prepare for things to go wrong with preparing now your emergency activities that can be done without internet or electricity..  

            In the 5 day challenge you will receive a cultural ‘find the difference’ sheet that can be pulled out and enjoyed at a moment’s notice. The collection is here.

 5. Schedule a monthly  independent day for you to take a mental health day – in or out of school (even with a non-Spanish speaking substitute.) 

             Try one from this collection.

6. If your school has weather-related or covid-related asynch days from home, prepare those lessons now.

             Here is my collection. 

7. Which holidays must you prepare a lesson to acknowledge?  Make those lessons now.  Here is mine on Dr. MLKing, Jr.

Summer is so precious.

Last year was so insane.  Take one hour to learn 7 Sanity Savers for this upcoming year and enjoy the freebies!  I updated to 7 but the video was made last year when I had 5 steps.  No, I am not spending time making another video, I am going to do more self-care.  We can all live with imperfections!

5 STEP CHALLENGE

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.

Use a daily tech guide for all three classes to stay on stay on task and to repeat with the next cycle.

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

(start each class with pre-class of lo veo/lo pienso/me pregunto with cultural images – continue in 7th and 8th grade )

(last 15 minutes video of country/typical breakfast activity  20 minutes of culture and 22 minutes of Spanish)

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.