Great news, teachers of Spanish 2! Everyone that has been using my curriculum and wondering when I was going to add slideshows like I have in my Spanish 1 units….that day has arrived! I just added a slideshow for my -AR preterite regular verbs unit, La muchacha y la ardilla, and I’ll be adding slideshows for…
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MovieTalk and activities: Amazing Acrobat Thief Kid!
If you follow The Comprehensible Classroom on Facebook, you may have already seen this video. (If not, visit our Facebook page now and “like” us!”) This video is perfect for MovieTalk because the action repeats several times within the video clip. (That’s also what I love about the short film Destiny, which I’ve blogged about before.) Here…
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Una aventura de camping: FREE UNIT!
I just put the finishing touches on the re-vamped Unit 18 of my Spanish 1 curriculum map. It is based on an adaptation from the second TPRS® story that I ever asked, and it targets the structures “oye algo”, “se despierta”, “se duerme”, and “durante la noche”. I use it to prepare my students to view and…
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Going back to school is a CRIME!
I found a pin on Pinterest last night that immediately reminded me of Dave Burgess and his Pirate-like ways! It is a blog post about using crime scenes in language classes from BusyTeacher.org, and I think that it would make the PERFECT first-day-of-classes activity for returning language students. (Click here for other first-week-of school activities for first year…
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Unit planning for TCI courses
My favorite session from iFLT 2014 (of the ones that I taught, anyway) was my session about planning units that introduce a set of target structures and then use them to teach a cultural topic to students. This was my favorite session because the creation of vocabulary-driven cultural units have had a greater impact on my…
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Super 7 verbs and Sweet 16 verbs
The goal of every language teacher is for their students to speak the language. We want our students to be able to talk about all kinds of topics and accomplish all kinds of purposes, talking to all kinds of people. But HOW??? Language is acquired, not learned. We don’t actually learn language by speaking; nor…
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Cinco de Mayo ideas for Spanish class
Mention Cinco de Mayo around a group of Spanish teachers and you’ll probably get a few nasty glares. But why? There is much confusion about this popular celebration–beginning with the fact that it is really only popular in the United States–NOT in Mexico. Most US citizens (including your students) think that it is Mexican Independence…
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El Secreto unit plans
Talk about a labor of love. I have been working on putting together the final touches on my “El Secreto” storytelling unit for Spanish II for literally months. It has taken the back burner to a series of other projects, but I finally sat down tonight, determined to complete it. The unit is designed to target Irregular…
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Wants, has, says
I got to teach Spanish today! It was super fun and super exhausting–and I only taught two-20 minute classes. Phew! How did I used to do this every day!? Mat-Su Community College has an annual “Kids 2 College” day where local fifth graders spend a day at the college and take classes. None of the kids had…
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Semana Santa
Finally! I have been meaning for years to add a comprehensible Semana Santa reading to my holidays repertoire, and I am happy to announce that I’ve finally finished it! You can download the final product here. It contains a two-level embedded reading with pre and post-reading discussion questions and comprehension questions, a MovieTalk/video activity, an…
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