Minute by Minute Spanish

Spanish Lessons

Spanish Class – Clean Desks to End Coronavirus Musical Video Routine Makes Cleaning Fun

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Two new musical videos for the 2020 school year: wash your hands and clean your desk.

Scroll below to have the free handwashing song sent to you.

Our latest musical video has the students wearing masks and cleaning their desks to kill the coronavirus.  Add it to your daily slide show to make this task more enjoyable and empowering to students.

Vamos a limpiar trim from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

 

 

Llegó la hora

de limpiar.

Vamos a limpiar.

Vamos a limpiar nuestros muebles.

Vamos a acabar.

Vamos a acabar el coronavirus.

Vamos a acabar el coronavirus

limpiando nuestros muebles.

 

 

 

Everyone needs to wash their hands, so we might as well do it in Spanish.

Moja y moja con agua no olvides de cerrar el grifo mientras enjabonas tus manos

Frótate con el jabón hasta que haga espuma y restriega bien las manos mientras termina esta canción.  

Y luego enjuágate con agua hasta que saques el jabón.

Luego sécate, porque aunque las manos se vean limpias, ¡pueden tener microbios asquerosos!

Repitamos para una limpieza mayor.

Download complete song without avatar below.

This song was made by the three Venezuelan families I support with all of the net proceeds from my store.

Here is a video of their opening boxes of used clothing that my friends donated.  We are hoping that you download this song and like it enough to check out our songs.

 

 

 

 

en shrager on Vimeo.

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Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Spanish DL Block and Modified Block Survival Kit

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starting the new school year 2020

Summer 2020 found me emotionally ping-ponging between anxiety about keeping my husband safe and grieving setting aside 30 years of carefully crafted lessons using 90% target language from day one.  As we await the final decision, we suspect the winner of the big reveal will be modified block scheduling.

UPDATE:

The winner is definitely modified block – with-a-yet-to-be-confirmed configuration. 

I am so grateful that my admin takes the time to explore wise tweaks to the schedule, but meanwhile I am planning my 90 minute synchronous lessons and my Wednesday asynchronous lessons.

 

All across the country parents are worried about our middle-school students being in front of a screen for so many hours. 

Many parents have confided that their students previously went to school and came home and spent hours on their screens – screen time is a major part of today’s youth’s entertainment, connection to others, and down time. 

Now parents need to flip to other activities and during a pandemic it is challenging for them.  I admire all of the parents, including my nieces and nephews, who have creatively sought out alternatives for their children.

My challenge is how to teach such a basic level without being on the screen? 

So far my solution is to make the asynchronous day a cultural choice board with a minimum of screen introduction and maximum time with off-the-screen choices.

For my second career, I started teaching in the mid 1980’s! 

Where you even born?  Out of school? 

Can you imagine someone my age, an obvious tech immigrant, adjusting to teaching with apps on a screen? 

I can, and you can, too!

(Check out my hair in my picture – those are not fashion-statements gray hairs, but ones I have earned by teaching adolescents for over 30 years.)

Our new paradigm.  (Come shift with me!)

First, this can be our most concentrated teaching – teaching the most important concepts in the limited time we have.

Second, we can embrace the true meaning of Comprehensible Input and drench our students with listening and reading and have speaking and writing take a back seat.  Yes, I know,

  • our  partner activities

  • our think-pair-share activities

  • our “den cinco” partner swapping activities

  • our  “adivina” upper level thinking activities

  • our  ‘habla, habla, cambia’ activities

bring students the most joy – and they still will, but not as frequently.  But if you really believe in CI, then let’s embrace this year as our year to focus on input.

Are you willing to try it?

Third, we need to grieve setting aside our masterful lessons for incorporating  our 90% target language with new Spanish 1 students. 

We understand that the first ten minutes of the block need to be an engaging pre-class. 

We need to accept sacrificing  our usual opening routines for  providing Higher-Level thinking skills as we teach culture in English.

We need to accept being told what to do, in spite of our previous academic freedom. 

Personally, I agree that the trauma of 2020 justifies these changes, and I want low-anxiety class openings.

Here is a list of Day 4, the other days were not block days.

 

My block scheduling tool kit includes:

1.  Attendance Activity Spanish One

2.  Attendance Activity Spanish Two

3.  Authentic Musical Timers

4.  Stretches

5. Mindful Activities

 

If it is the winner, we were told to expect to be taking careful attendance the first ten minutes during an engaging “pre-class activity.”   I wasted a morning searching for cultural videos, rejecting everything showing alcohol or skimpy clothing or any other inappropriate segments for my junior high students.

I started thinking more about what I want for these unknown students who already have stolen a piece of my heart, just because they are entering a new building without all of the usually welcoming activities that create community and a sense of safety.

I am already worried about all of their screen time and how to inspire higher level thinking skills beyond the ‘let’s Google translate” mindset of many students last spring.

 


1. Attendance Activity Spanish One

I am going to use their check-in time to learn about culture and to learn to separate what they observe from what they surmise, and to stretch and wonder about what they observe. While I hope that we will be able to return to our building after Thanksgiving, I am preparing lessons based on meeting twice a week for 40 weeks.  I now have 100 slides that I can use for this attendance activity.

lo veo preclass virtualaaaa from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

 

In general, when teaching synchronously, I average 75 slides per class.  About 20 of the slides are interactive slides for my students.  They are in the daily student “guía”

While playing the catchy “lo veo, lo pienso, me pregunto” and “preguntas” songs, student will be filling out their daily Google slide.  In the past they had a separate notebook for the slides, but I believe that this year it will just be included in their guía.

 



2. Attendance Activity for Spanish Two.

Now with Google Slides boxes.

 



3. Timers to pace out the longer class period.

As I adjust to longer class periods, I want to stay on track by using timers with culturally authentic music.

I like to use the following:

4 minutes – Música Llanera Pista

3 minutes Reggaeton Pista

3 minutes Reggaeton ¡Que Hoy No Hay Para Comer!

2 minutes Reggaeton Pista

2 minutes Reggaeton Lyrics Días Festivos

11/2 minutes Salsa Pista

1 minute Gaita Venezolana Pista

10 minutes Bachata with encouraging phrases

5 minutes Bachata with encouraging phrases

 



4.  Stretches  whether students are in front of you or at home – take a two minute stretch every 20  minutes.  Do it to music or a soothing Spanish voice for Mindful Stretches.

 

 

5. Mindful Activities

 

This song was made by the three Venezuelan families I support with all of the net proceeds from my store.

Here is a video of their opening boxes of used clothing that my friends donated. We are hoping that you download this song and like it enough to check out our songs.

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!
Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

COVID Spanish Teaching: Replace White Boards, Partners, Moving around Class with Personalized Jamboard for Engaging Comprehensible Input

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Jamboard for blog.mp4 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

 

 

 

explantion 2 aug 27 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

For more support, there are three available choices:

  1. Use bitmoji on the Jamboard as part of the Building Community lesson.

    2. Just use our 50 avatars for the Jamboard.

3. Combine the Building Community with our 50 avatars.

 

 

jboard exp from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

These Jamboard activities are part of our  Build community with our Day 3 lesson – students create a ‘get-acquainted slide’ using either our locker background or their own design and they make an avatar for:

  • our classroom platform

  • their ‘get-acquainted’ activity

  • most importantly to label with their name to become part of our daily comprehensible input activities using Jamboard, the free Chrome extension. 

Use the avatar to quickly respond to Comprehensible Reading, Writing and/or Speaking prompts.  Video of how to  make prompts included in lesson.

Platform Activity

Building Community Distance Learning

 

Get-Acquainted Activity

Questions? Contact me at ellen@minutebyminutespanish.

 

For more info on Plan A and Plan B lessons, read this blog.

For more info on  Building Community, read this blog.

and sign up below for 5 freebies for building community.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Spanish One Day 1 Lesson: Hybrid, Asynchronous, Synchronous, Streaming, In-Person – You Need Plan A and Plan B

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If you are like me and unsure of the new school year, learn how to create a Plan A and Plan B to cover all of your bases.

If you want to download my Plan A, Plan B, and the Guía for Spanish One, Day One in Google Slides™, click the button below.

Hybrid, Asynchronous, Synchronous, Streaming, In Person Spanish 1 Day One Lesson from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

 

 

 

 Click here to read  the next blog about building community.

Click here to read about personalizing Jamboard for interactive simultaneous participation.

     

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Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Build Community in Distance Learning Spanish Class – The 5 Step Challenge

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Building Community during Distance Learning

How can your students feel seen, heard, loved, and part of a community when they haven’t even met you in person?

 

Step 1:  Teach this lesson and Platform Activity

Teach Day One with free lesson  and assign “Get Acquainted Platform Activity” for homework or else make it the activities for Day Two. With over 10,000 downloads, my first day’s lesson is used around the world to successfully start first year students in the target language.

They learn “me llamo” “me gusta” and “no me gusta.”

You can download the free PowerPoint from TpT.

Build Community Distance Learning2

You can download the  updated virtual Google™ Slides by joining our newsletter’s Five Day  Challenge. Each day you will work on one step and receive a freebie to help you with that step.  After five days, you will receive a monthly newsletter with tips for distance learning, teaching with comprehensible input, and teaching  with 90% target language. The distance learning/virtual lesson for day 1 has over 50 slides that students can manipulate without teacher assistance.  It will give you many ideas for your future lessons, not just the first day.

At the end of this blog, there is an eight minute video of the lesson.

Traditionally, for homework, students share the name they want to be called and their likes and dislikes using either a tissue box or a 8½” x 11” sheet of paper.

build community in distance learning class #3

Updating it to accommodate distance learning, the students create a slide with the same three elements :

“Me gusta”

“No me gusta”

“Me llamo.”

No other words are included, just images.

The distance learning page includes one new element: Students create an image of themselves to go on the classroom bleachers in the virtual classroom. Assemble the slides into one Google™ Slide to share with the students.  I use a screen capturing software to make it a video for students to review and learn about their classmates.

You decide if the image should be actual pictures or emojis. (I chose emojis because seventh and eighth grade students can be thoughtless and use another’s vandalized image to boost their social media ratings.)

Also choose if you want their names on their emojis or if you want to place numbers on them with the name students use next to the number. This will require a bit of time, but will be worth it for building community. You are going to cut and paste each emoji to the bleacher and I suggest that you save it without the name for the next step.

 

Step 2: Personalization

Your goal is to build community with families., parents and students.  When I teach in person, parents send in a form about their child.  This year, they will submit a Google™ Form.  You can receive a copy of this as a springboard for creating your own when your join our e-mail newsletter above. With parents personalizing your knowledge of their children, let’s continue to build community with students.

First, now that you have your students on the bleachers, name your class.  I use the word “pandilla” in Spanish and add villa to my last name.  La pandilla de Shragervilla quickly gets shortened to Shragervilla and soon it become our identity.

“In Shragervilla we . . .”  “I really miss Shragervilla this year, Profe”  “Is Shragervilla going on another virtual field trip?”

So, first, create  your class name,

Building Community Distance Learning

Second, save this as a png o jpeg and insert it into your slide with directions, giving the vibe that these instructions are just for us, Shragervilla.

I just added to this discusion by creating a personalized Jamboard for interactive activities.  See my newest blog!

Third, if you are able to dedicate the time that first week, create a Quizlet or Quizizz game using the images and first names for students to learn one another’s names quickly.

Personalizing names

Fourth, when creating new worksheets, sprinkle your students’ names in them to keep them actively looking to see if they are included. Students feel seen when their names are mentioned and everyone knows their names.

 

Step 3: Transition Songs

Students feel loved when teachers use messages  that speak of love.  You can create your own images, songs, or memes and make them part of your daily routine.

In my class, we start every class with the song snip “¡Hola, M’ijos” and explain ‘m’ijos’ means my children as your students become dear children to you.  End each class with the song snip “Recuerdan que los quiero.”

Tell students every day that you love them all, and warm feelings will creep into your class.  Students will feel loved.

I use transition songs, performed by professional Venezuelan musicians, during my usual forty-five minutes classes because they keep students on task and in the target language. Since my distance lessons are considerably shorter, I use song snips.

BUENOS DIAS PROFESORAV from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

Each song snip is approximately 15 – 20 seconds. The two above are included in the first day’s lesson and “hasta luego” will be sent to our newsletter group.

build community in spanish class

 

Tell students every day that you love them all, and warm feelings will creep into your class.  Students will feel loved.

Spanish Routines for Distance Learning Hybrid Lessons from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

Starter kit with platform activity and four of the song snips available here.

        

Step 4: Daily Google Form for Feedback

The penultimate slide plays the snip song “Vamos a llenar formularios” with a link to a quick feedback form.  It usually contains a few questions from the day’s lesson and asks four important questions:

  1. How long did it take you to complete today’s lesson?
  2. What questions do you have or What do you think I should know about today’s lesson?
  3. Complete this sentence. “Today I still wonder about. ..”
  4. How did you experience today’s lesson?

End the Google form with a true false question “I need to return to the Google ™ Slides, answer the last question, and submit them.”  Link the Google™ Form back to the slides for the reflection song and the students sharing something specific they learned. A copy of my Google ™ Form will be sent to members of my newsletter group.

Start reviewing the Google™ Forms early in the day to fix any mistakes that the students tell you. I like to make a quick video of my reading the questions and giving the answers.  Students feel heard when their questions are answered by the end of the day.

 

Step 5: Shortcuts for speedily grading Google Slides with feedback.

How I wish back in March of 2020, in one of the umpteen zoom trainings about Google™ apps and extensions, someone had showed me how to quickly grade Google™ Slides with thorough feedback. We couldn’t assign daily deadlines, rather everything was due on Friday by 3:00 p.m. and it all had to be graded with feedback by Monday at 3:00 pm.  Tuesdays became our new Saturdays because we worked all weekend.  Accurate grading determined attendance yet many teachers gave up on grading the slides.

The key to speedy and accurate Google™ Slide grading is…drum roll, please…a scoring guide for that day’s slides.

Pick your 5 slides that you will grade and create accurate explanations and soon you will be clicking on the rectangles while the scores are automatically calculated. As I start my new lessons, each day there will be a scoring guide included for speedy feedback and grades. Members of the 5 Step challenge will receive what I use for the first day and keep it as a template for future lessons.

Fast Google Classroom Grading

fast speedy google grading from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

 

Want a preview of the first day’s lesson before you download it?

Building Community in Distance Learning Spanish Class from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

If you need a Plan A and a Plan B and a Guía for Students for Day 1, click here to read the next blog.

Other lessons from last spring – detailed videos of each day’s lesson.

 

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!
Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!