Become a more confident language teacher.
Each year, I wait with great anticipation to see what story the National Lottery Commission will share through their annual anuncio for the National Spanish Christmas Lottery. These stories, told in short films, are a great teaching tool to use in class to promote a spirit of generosity and community among our students. Over the…
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If you’re a language teacher, I am willing to bet that you have played the Flyswatter game with your students! The Flyswatter game, commonly called Matamoscas in Spanish, is an easy game that brings in movement and competition. It’s also easy to keep it Comprehension-focused, as Keith Toda taught us some years ago. But is…
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I grew up in New York. As I began traveling to faraway lands, I’d answer the question, “Where are you from?” with “The US, New York!”. The reaction from the listener almost always had something to do with the Yankees, or Broadway, or Times Square, or simply an exclamation of how exciting that must be.…
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It’s September, and you have ANOTHER chance to save up to 25% on all of our resources for Spanish 1 and 2. Now that teachers are back to school and know exactly what kinds of resources they need to survive or thrive this fall, Teachers Pay Teachers has decided to throw their first-ever September Sitewide…
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Last week, Elicia Cárdenas taught a Demo lesson for the First Day of language class that can be taught in-person or virtually. We recorded the lesson and debuted it during a Facebook Watch Party on Thursday, and the feedback has been overwhelming: seeing this demo is exactly what teachers need to feel confident on their…
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Finding great resources to use with your students is one thing, but actually sharing them with your students is a whole ‘nother ball game. If you use Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, this blog post will be a starting point for setting up Slides/PPT and Forms assignments for your students. Example assignments in Learning…
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This fall, teachers are facing an unprecedented instructional challenge. While plans for re-opening school are in a constant state of flux, we know that many teachers will be required to manage students in multiple instructional contexts: in-person, online, and combinations of the two. Just as SOMOS has given thousands of teachers the confidence to step…
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This is a guest post authored by Elicia Cárdenas, Director of Training for The Comprehensible Classroom. In response to the many atrocities that our nation has witnessed at the expense of Black people–and other people–, more and more discussions are happening online and in-person about racism and anti-racism. It is wonderful to see educators coming…
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The most successful synchronous lessons are often game-based. As a parent, I have been spying on my own kids’ synchronous classes. As a curriculum coach, I’ve been debriefing synchronous lesson plans with SOMOS teachers. GAMES make online classes feel less like a chore, and they allow us to do what we miss most about being…
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If you’re anything like me, you love a good manipulative activity. Here are some common manipulative activities used by language teachers: sequencing events from a story that are printed on strips of paper matching chunks of authentic texts to paraphrased summaries sorting quotes into groups based on who said or would have said each one…
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