Spanish Winter Songs – Ojála que Nieve y Súper Juego
As students return after Winter Break, help them to express their thoughts about the football playoffs and about potential snow school cancellations.
These catchy songs will work their way into your students’ speech and will help build a sense of community about anticipating future events.
Nieve Folding Instagram5 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
Update nieve! from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
explanation súper juego 2020 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
All net proceeds help three Venezuelan families – meet them in this video as they open three boxes I sent to them.
If you want to read more about class structure and transition videos, read my blog here.
If your school won’t provide you with these tools, you may consider this:
Just Prep during Your Prep Spanish Class Lesson Template for Daily Tech Guide
How to create your own CI classroom using a PPT/Google Slides with links to CI activities .
Game Changer Alert! If you want to structure your class with routines and varied activities, stay in the target language and prep for each lesson during your prep and not at home, then use this PowerPoint template. Use it every day to establish routines and create an interesting class. Choose from among the 75 activity slides for your activities. Never forget something you wanted to do in class because you have a slide for it.
Save each day’s presentation “daily tech guide” in a folder with handouts and label it day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. and next year spend even less time prepping for the day’s lesson. If you have already purchased a bundle of videos or the videos included below, go here and I will send you the template.
Some of the routine videos are embedded. You can always add more by clicking on the icon on top of the slide. There are 75 suggested activities and many have links to blogs. This is a growing bundle. Follow instructions inside to join our group and share new activities that we can add to the resource. Or send me your email for monthly updated slides.
It doesn’t open in a Chromebook if you want a Google Drive™ version, click here.
After downloading, if you want to order a bundle of videos, email me and I will insert them for you and set up your custom bundle.
You should use a remote presentation device or wireless mouse so that you can stand anywhere in the room and click to the next slide.
You will need to be able to open a zipped file to find:
- 1 PowerPoint to use in class with 95 + slides and appealing visuals
- 1 La clase va a empezar video.
- 1 Hoy aprendí video.
- 1 Role video.
- 1 ¿Cual es la fecha de hoy? video
- 1 Saluden a tus compañeros video snip.
- 1 Gracias por aprender video.
- 1 Días de la semana video.
- 1 Dedo roto video.
- 1 Me siento fatal.
The PowerPoint is editable, but if teammates, coworkers or a school or a school district would like to use my resources, there is a multiple user license that is available at a reduced price.
Are you like me and wish for four things this school year?
13 Minutes of Instructions on how to personalize your template.
If you would like to purchase the template with the videos, click here.
If you would like to join our FB group and share new activities and slides, click here.
All net proceeds help three Venezuelan families – meet them in this video as they open three boxes I sent to them.
If you want to read more about class structure and transition videos, read my blog here.
If your school won’t provide you with these tools, you may consider this:
Venezuelan Current Events Activities for Spanish Class Students
current events venezuela22 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
Current Events in Venezuela 2019
How can you make today’s Venezuelan Crises concrete for Spanish students?
Price of Food and Wages
Students predict how many hours they would have to work if they lived in Venezuela and received minimum wage.
Students predict prices for a typical household of five’s necessities. They can do this for three dates, January 31st, February 6th, and February 13th.
Price of Education
Students read prices written in words and write the numerals on a work sheet and calculate from bolivares to dollars. Students discuss the implications when they do the same for the father’s wages.
Agua en Venezuela
Students read the difficulty that Cristina has to bring a water bottle to school. Free download.
Learn about the name of the Venezuelan states and color their state flags. Great for Sub plans.
All net proceeds go to three Venezuelan families. Help support their education and keep them well-fed and with medicines when they need them.
Once a year I send them used clothing from my family and colleagues at school.
If you are interested in Venezuela, you may like this song about immigrating to Colombia.
You may also be interested in the Venezuelan National Anthem Video and booklet.
Click here to help them.
My instagram postings are below – follow me here.
Five Rules for Spanish Class Transitions
A student studying to be a Spanish teacher asked, “What frase in the target language should I use to get their attention when transitioning to an new activity?”
The shallow answer is “¿listos o no listos?” My students answer in unison “listos” and occassionaly in a playful mood they will tell me “no listos” and I will tell them “no es la respuesta correcta” and we try again and move on.
Transitions can make or break classroom management and a one-size-fits-all approach is a common pitfall for new teachers. As a reflective teacher in her 30th year in the secondary classroom, I have 5 rules for world language class transitions.
1. Do not try to get the class to be quiet, rather you want them to be attentive. Students respond better to giving you a reply than to hushing. Create responses for them and they will all join in.
2. Do not get their attention until you are 110% prepared with the next activity. Getting their attention and then fumbling for the location of the handouts or the track on the CD or link to the video is deadly to classroom management. You will loose them and their attentiveness for future transitions, as they figure you don’t really mean it . . . yet.
3. Support your transitions with a visual, assuming you can project on to a screen or wall. I make a daily tech guide with a slide for each activity and each transition so that the students look up and know what to do even if they can’t quite hear you above all the paired practice speaking going on around them. Make a list of your weekly activities, make a slide for each one and a transition for each one. Use a remote presentation device or wireless mouse so you can stand near certain students while you transition through the class. Click here for videos of my tech-guided classes.
4. If you are using music or a video, embed them in your daily tech guide. This extra prep work will pay large dividends as you minimize down time.
5. Use musical transition videos. Over 50 of them were made by some fairly desperate Venezuelans and all proceeds go to them. They have created the best atmosphere for my level one classes, students delighting in the musical breaks and singing along as they do the transition. My transitions are now seamless.
Scroll down this previous post to get a feel for them – there are examples in six languages. They are a game changer!
1. When I am ready to start, I play the class count down video – students know to be seated and quiet as they count down the 3 -2 – 1 ya! French version below!
Students use this expression spontaneously before beginning anything.
2 I greet them, ask how they are, and tell them the objective of the day and the class activities of the day – all on 3 slides. I play the “Take out the Homework” video and show the answers on the board while I quickly check for completion. Since day two of the school year when I first played it, my students spontaneously tell me ‘la tengo’ or ‘no la tengo’ and if someone doesn’t have it everyone else asks, “¿en serio?”
3. Check for questions and play the musical slide to take attendance – we get nasty emails if we miss attendance for any class! My students tell me” X está ausente” or “no está ausente, en el baño.”
4. Play “The Daily Review”song and complete five minutes of review. My Spanish 1 students can fluently say “cuando necesito gramática perfecta” and “¿Qué hago – repaso, repaso, repaso”
5. Play “Take Out the Vocab List video and they can all mimic “Favor de sacar la lista del vocabulario.”
I also play the self- talk musical slide that reminds students if they don’t get it right to tell them selves – I don’t have it yet! I introduce a chunk of vocabulary, practice comprehension with gestures and then show slides with visuals. My Spanish 1 students use “lo acerté spontaneously in many situations” and even “no lo acerté – todavía.”
6. Play the video about finding a random partner of the week or if we already did it play the musical slide to find this week’s partner.
My students can say ¿Quién sera? even though they won’t be taught this tense for three more years.
7. Practice with partner(s) usually some kind of spontaneous speech activity – there are videos that show the students how to play guessing games. If we have the computers then they will watch “The Take Out the Computer” video, “Practice QuizletLive” video, students practice on their own, play the quizlet live video and finally I play the “Put Away the Computers” video and rearrange the chairs slide. My students quickly learn the games that have songs to teach the vocabulary and create spontaneous dialogues – month two of Spanish One! They can all do “más alto, más bajo” and many others.
8. Slide leading into next activity – could be a listening activity or a reading activity or Simon says. My students all know “vamos a jugar” and can follow it with many games.
9. Tidy up the room.
_13 Que desorden Pls no posting – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
10.Take out the Agenda video and students write down the homework. My students can say any line from this song at appropriate times.
“ay no me gusta, pero es importante” “Saco mi agenda, escribo la tarea.”
_20 Saco Mi Agenda Pls no posting – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
11. Closure – students sing and then tell me something new they learned. My students can spontaneously say “Hoy, hoy aprendi ” and complete the thought.
Video 69 Señora – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
My public school seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in Spanish One produce spontaneous speech even if they don’t want to – they can’t help themselves because music enters their brains and remains like nothing else that I have tried in these past 30 years. You can make your own songs or use mine.
You can even use my videos, created by native speakers, and offered here on TeacherspayTeachers. Or click here for the starter kit! They help support several Venezuelan families. We are making them in French, Mandarin, German, and Latin, and English. What I love about TeacherspayTeachers is that it helps new teachers to quickly climb the learning curve by selecting tried and true activities from veteran teachers still in the classroom, like me! If you need something new to get your students spontaneously speaking in the target language – this is it!