How do we create a comfortable environment for our lower level Spanish classes while striving for the 90% target language goal?

Today on “Spanish Teachers in the US” a teacher  asked this heart-felt question.

For me and my first year students, the answer is visual comprehensible input. (vci)

I support everything with a visual – my daily flipchart has 60 – 100 slides of visual support. I believe that first you use direct instruction of 50 survival expressions and train the students to speak to the teacher and  also to one another in Spanish.

2020 Update – Distance Learning Day 1 Lesson 

Next, you script your lessons minute by minute, embedding audio, movies, transitions, pages, worksheets, everything you use so that students understand what to do, even if they don’t understand everything you say, they get the message without using English.

While I described it in words, Toni Harris and Silvia Vazquez Paramio requested to see what this would look like.   Spot on, that is what our students are thinking while we are speaking in the target language, “Can you give us a visual?”

I’ve created a thinglink to show you the Daily Tech Guide (DTG) that I used the first day of school on September 9, 2015. If you want to use this DTG, you can download it for free from TpT. I have made about 30 or so of these available and hope to add one a day as I teach with it. Enjoy!

Day 1 First Day of Spanish One with 90% Target Language and 100% Comprehensible Input

Note: since writing this last year I have come up with Spanish Class Hacks to 90% TL and Classroom Management for those teachers needing a quick DTG for other levels.

I made a poster to explain it with a link.

Video Day 1 from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

Free Download from TeacherspayTeachers        More Lessons Available           Survival Expressions – Class Decorations

Link to videos mentioned below!