A Quick Round-up of Activities to Celebrate Navidad With Spanish Students

It's the "most wonderful time of the year", right before winter break and your students are restless, thinking of vacation and Christmas. 

Here are some fun and engaging ways to keep students learning Spanish language and culture!

1. Decorate the Room (or just the classroom door!)

How to Spanish speaking countries decorate for Navidad? Have your students discuss or write about this using authentic Spanish vocabulary, then go crazy decorating the classroom!

2. Listen to (and sing!) Christmas Carols! 

All of my students, from the littlest to the adults, absolutely LOVE using music as a tool to learn Spanish. Not only does it make for a fun class, but listening to and singing Villancicos can improve your students' Spanish skills in a big way. 

A quick YouTube or Spotify search will find playlists galore to use as background music. If you would like to take it to the next level, creating a lyric fill-in sheet and extension activities will reinforce this new vocabulary.

3. Write a Letter to the Reyes Magos

Have your students been good? What is on their wishlist? 

Have your students write a letter to their favorite Wise Man with a list of what they would like to receive. What a great way for them to learn meaningful vocabulary!

Here are some adorable examples of letters to the Reyes Magos. Here are some other examples.

4. Play Games and Activities:

There are so many games that you can play with students that have a Navidad theme! No prep games include 20 questions and hangman. However, by far, my students' favorite activites are Loteria (similar to BINGO), Madlibs, and Escape Rooms.

Bingo is a great group activity that helps students recognize and practice identifying vocabulary.  Here are two versions of the game: digital and printable.

Another activity that works in small or larger groups is "Fill-in" Stories (similar to Madlibs).

Students work together to complete a story using vocabulary they know. At the end of the class, students can share their silly stories and vote on the best one!

A more involved activity that was a big hit with my virtual students last year during COVID were Digital Escape Rooms with a Navidad theme. I created a Spanish Navidad and a Mexican Navidad escape room, in 2 different versions each--in English for more of a cultural learning and in Spanish to reinforce vocabulary as well. Next year, I hope to create a classroom version where students can work together in person to solve the riddles!

Using Scrambled Sentences to Improve Confidence with Spanish Reading and Fluency

We all have had to sacrifice and pivot during COVID. One of the sacrifices that my family has had to make has been not traveling. We have not been to Spain in over two years. The lack of immersion has affected my boys' level of Spanish in a significant way--especially for my 6 year old who, pre-COVID, did not have any formal education in Spanish.

As things are slowly getting "back to normal" for us, we enrolled our boys in Spanish classes for the school year. However, they, like many of their classmates, have seen their Spanish skills drop over the last couple of years.

Last week, my youngest son was quarantined at home for 10 days due to being a close contact for someone who tested positive for COVID. We were sent a couple of school packets home and had a few ZOOM classes throughout the week, but there was a lot of down time for sure.

I decided to take out some Thanksgiving themed Spanish worksheets. They had scrambled sentences where he had to cut out the words and form a coherent sentence with them. 

The worksheets had 2 different levels:

• the simpler level asked the student to copy the sentence that was written 

• and the higher level simply provided the words and the student had to create their own sentence.

Do you know that my son was able to do the higher level--and asked for more??? 

He had such a great time cutting and pasting, 

figuring out how to form a coherent sentence (often looking for clues like punctuation and capital letters),

and writing his sentences.

More importantly, it was a quick activity that helped him gain so much confidence with his reading skills.  

He was so excited about learning to read in Spanish that he picked up a few Spanish picture books and tried to read them as well! #winning

 

6 Reasons Why Listening to Christmas Carols Will Help Students Learn Spanish

As the weather gets colder and we move into the holiday season, many teachers look for fun and engaging ways to help their students improve Spanish. One of my favorite ways by far, for students both young and old to work on their Spanish in a fun way, is by listening to villancicos navideños (Christmas Carols).

Beyond the "catchy tune" that makes the lyrics stick in your head (I can still sing "Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant" and Joe Dessin's "Aux Champs Elysses" from my high school French class 30 years later...) and the inevitable repetition of playing a fun song again and again (and hearing the musak version in stores while out and about), there are several reasons why actively listening to Christmas Carols (and other music) can help you learn Spanish.

1. Students learn more by using vocabulary in context rather than memorizing lists of words. 

The more information you have about a word, the easier it will be to understand its use, use it yourself, and, finally memorize it. Brains love to learn new things by making associations or connections with information that is already known. Students will remember new information even easier if they have several facts or memories to connect the new one to.

When students listen to villancicos, they are learning Christmas vocabulary, but also words and phrases that are used during celebrations, winter, family, and culture. With context, not only do students learn a new word, but they also learn how this word is used and other words used with it. They can then use this new knowledge and apply it to conversations they have with classmates or other Spanish speaking members of their communities.

2.  Students learn "real world" Spanish including idioms and slang.

Sometimes, as teachers, we tend to teach a very tame version of Spanish. It makes perfect sense! After all, we want our students to be respectful, have correct grammar, and present themselves well when they immerse themselves in a new language and culture. 

However, many times, when our students travel or even just go to the local Mexican taqueria, they may not even understand what the native Spanish speakers are saying!

Why?

Because native speakers of all language often take liberties with that language!

Songs, even less traditional villancicos, may include "street Spanish" and more colloquial vocabulary. They may reference idioms or customary stories without explaining them completely.

3. Students learn Spanish in an active way.

Because students need to understand the words and phrases in order to understand the song, they tend to be more invested and more active in their learning. When trying to understand a song, it is not enough to just learn words in isolation...instead, they must understand the verb conjugations, the context, and the overall meaning of the song.

Additionally, instructors can make the learning even more active by providing activities that go along with the Christmas Carols. 

Many teachers provide lyric fill-ins, where key vocabulary is left for the student to complete while listening to the song. This can even be scaffolded by having the infinitive version of the verb listed and the student must listen to the song to hear how it is conjugated.

Students can also complete activities related to the song. They can be as simple as a coloring sheet for more introductory levels of Spanish, or something more complex, like a crossword puzzle or word search, an essay prompt, or a "craftivity".

When students learn new vocabulary and grammar through Villancicos, and then actively apply that knowledge, it is more likely to "stick".

4.  Listening to Christmas Carols improves pronunciation.

The fact of the matter is that it is extremely difficult to give students enough authentic input of their target language to become fluent. Every extra bit of "real world Spanish" that we can expose them to will improve their Spanish immensely. It is not enough to just read and write and speak with classmates. Students need to hear a variety of native speakers speaking (and singing!) Spanish in order to perfect their intonation, rhythm, and pronunciation. Christmas Carols are perfect for this!

Not only are they familiar and fun, but traditional carols often feature slower tempos and more traditional vocabulary. Many are extremely repetitive so students will hear the same words again and again. Students will be singing along (not realizing they are practicing their Spanish!) by the end of the song.

5. The songs' melody, rhythm, and rhyme helps students remember vocabulary and grammar.

Howstuffworks.com explains how attributes of Christmas Carols can help students memorize the Spanish language. The Method of Loci describes a way that the brain will learn new facts quicker if you associate them with known facts. For example, if your students listen to the traditional "Noche de Paz", they may be able to hum the familiar "Silent Night" tune to remember the words noche means night and paz means peace.

The rhythm inherent a song also helps students' minds to recall new vocabulary and phrases in two different ways: grouping and patterning. We know from experience that grouping items can help us memorize a series of numbers, such as a phone number. The same can be said for learning vocabulary and phrases in a target language! Additionally, rhythm is a pattern and orderly patterns are easier for our brains to remember because they are predictable and we can anticipate the next part of the pattern.

Finally, "acoustic encoding" is what helps us remember things that we hear. Since our brain naturally breaks down words by sounds, rhymes are much easier for us to process and remember.

6. Students learn better in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.

In this study presented in the 2016 European Conference for language learning, researchers found that learning through song improved students' vocabulary learning and retention. The brain is stimulated through music and song, and balances out the left (traditional classroom teaching) and right (music) brained learning of a language. However, one of the most significant findings of the study, in my opinion, was that students bonded and relaxed while listening to music, which enabled them to enjoy learning their target language and look forward to learning more in the future.

So what do you say? Have your students responded well to listening to Villancicos in class? Which are their favorites? Let me know in the comments below!

Improve Spanish Fluency with 6 items that you already own!

How much money do we spend on educational toys, workbooks, or other items to help our students learn Spanish? Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could just use items WE ALREADY OWN to teach these skills?

WE CAN!

I love using household items, toys, or other things I already own to teach my students Spanish.  Let's talk about some of my favorite items that I use all the time to help my students improve their fluency.

1. Wordless Picture Books: 

Since we only visit Spain during the summer, I can never seem to find enough authentic Spanish books for my kids and students. I found that I can use wordless picture books to help my students work on their fluency and specific vocabulary.

Some of my favorite wordless picture books (also available at my local library!) are:

• Wave, by Suzy Lee
• The Snowman by Raymond Briggs
• Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
• One Frog Too Many by Mercer Mayer

You can also click here to find a more compressive list of wordless picture books that may work for you and your students.

2. Magazine pictures or Photo Albums: 

In the same vein as wordless picture books, students can piece together their own story using magazine photos or photo albums. Here, the students have more creative license to not just tell a story, but to tell their own story. 

I find that helping them limit their choices will enable them to target specific vocabulary that they are currently learning (or already know) so that they can concentrate on improving their fluency.  

For example, if students are learning travel related vocabulary and the past tense, they could find some pictures of a family or group of friends taking a vacation. Using magazines or the internet, they could find pictures of famous landmarks in their chosen destination and talk about their travels.

If, instead, the students are learning about foods and only speak in the present tense, they could tell a story about going to their favorite restaurant (or a funny story about going to a not-so-favorite restaurant).

3. Sequencing Cards:  

I have found that sequencing cards are SO PERFECT for working with beginning Spanish students. You can even have a word bank to trigger key vocabulary that the student can use while telling the story. Sequencing cards provide a simple and short plot that increases confidence and enables students to begin to tell meaningful stories that happen every day. 

4. Puppets, Stuffies, or Action Figures: 

For whatever reason, many of my students (young and old) love to work together to make a silly puppet show. I find that if I set the scene and pick out two to three "characters", students will jump at the chance to create a short, one to two minute dialog.

Some examples:

• Duck and Penguin cannot decide where to go and what to pack on their vacation. Duck wants to go to a warm mountain lake and Penguin wants to go skiing.
• Grandma and Grandpa want to buy a birthday gift for their grandson. They discuss his hobbies and decide what to buy him.
• Turtle and Horse are trying to plan a party. Turtle has a terrible memory and horse has to describe everyone he wants to invite before turtle will agree (or not) to put them on the party list.

5. Sticky Notes and Flash Cards: 

Sticky notes or flash cards can be used to prompt ideas, grammar or vocabulary into a dialog or story plot. If your students are talking about their last vacation, you could ensure that they are also using interesting transition words by giving them 3 phrases that they have to use at some point in their story. 

Another way they can be used is to help students with role playing. One of my favorite games to play with students is to have a group of students pretend to be in a restaurant. One student is the waiter and each of the customers draw a card with a specific problem or characteristic written on it. For example, one diner is allergic to tomatoes. Another is a vegetarian. A third only wants cold food. It is the waiter's job to figure out what is going on!

6. Costumes and Props: 

Many students love to "dress up" and play the part of a character. It's often easier to speak as a professor when you are wearing glasses, or as chef if you are wearing an apron. Allow students to bring in or use some props you have when performing a dialog and watch them take it to the next level!

Props can also be used as a game in which students must invent an advertisement for a specific object. Students can work alone or in teams to write a script to convince others to buy their item. Another game would be where students write a description of an item that they "lost" somewhere in the classroom and have the other students try to identify and find the item.

What other non-traditional, household items do you use to help your students learn Spanish? Let me know in the comments below!

6 New Ways to Use Flash Cards to Teach Spanish

Everyone knows to break out the 3x5 index cards when they have a list of vocabulary words to memorize, but I have found that flash cards can be super useful in many different ways.

Over the years, I have found 6 unconventional ways that I use flash cards to teach Spanish.

1.  Portable Word Wall or Spelling Dictionary:  Somewhat related to vocabulary memorization, I often have students write reference words or phrases on index cards (you can punch a hole in the corner and put them on a ring).  

Great ideas are words that students typically want to use when writing or speaking, or even more "interesting" or "juicy" words that they would like to use more often. For example, lists of words in these "Instead of..." bookmarks are good candidates for portable word walls as well!

2. Pairs of Words or Ideas that Go Together:  Students can play "matching" or "memory" games with vocabulary or idea pairs with index cards. 

For example, every year, I pull out the notecards when a student needs to memorize Spanish speaking countries and their capitals. Other ideas to pair words could be a word with its synonyms (or antonyms). 

Also, don't be afraid to use photos or pictures to pair up famous Hispanics and their accomplishments or just a photo of a person or object and it's characteristics.

3. Mixed up Sentences, Paragraphs, Comics: I often put one or a few words on a notecard that can create a sentence. Students (both beginner and advanced!) love unscrambling sentences. Often a simple preposition will be able to give a clue if the word order is correct or not.

Another idea would be to write one sentence per index card and have the student create a coherent paragraph. 

I have also cut up comics (wordless or with words) or just pasted one photo/picture per card and had students put them in order to create a story (sometimes silly, sometimes serious!)

                                 

4. Ordering Words or Events: When students need to memorize vocabulary that typically goes in a certain order (such as numbers, days of the week, months of the year...) index cards can be used to put them in the correct order. 

Students can also order events using notecards (similar to the game Timeline). This is useful for things that happen during the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or even learning about important cultural events, festivals, and holidays.

  

5. Discussion Prompts and Sentence Starters: Index cards are a terrific tool for teachers and tutors to pull out different discussion prompts for students. You can also mix it up and pull out a discussion prompt and a vocabulary word or two that students need to incorporate into the dialogue. For more beginning students, you can even make "sentence starters" where students can complete a simple thought in Spanish.

6. Conjugating Verbs: Finally, I use flashcards to help students conjugate verbs. Check out this post to see the details on this technique. You can also use the subject and verb as a sentence starter (adding in a prompt such as "Where?" or "How?" or "Why?" or extra vocabulary words for students to add more detail to their response.

What other ways do you use index cards with your students? Please share below!

Teaching Spanish Number Vocabulary to Elementary Students

Last spring, a number of my tutoring students graduated.  I had been working with many of these students for 5 years or more and I was both proud and a little sad at their moving on to the next stage of their lives.

This also meant that I was able to accept new students to work with.  I have been so pleased with the variety of levels and ages that I am working with this fall.  I have a number of kindergarten and early elementary students at a very low level of Spanish.  Several of them are math oriented so we started our lessons by learning how to count in Spanish.

Here are five of my favorite activities:

1.  Sing, sing sing!  Unfortunately for me, many of my students do not love singing, but I still try to push it a bit as it's a great way to learn new vocabulary and gain confidence in speaking a new language.  Some of my favorite numbers songs are:


Un Elefante Se Balanceaba

Cingo Monitos

Cinco Pececitos Se Fueron a Nadar

2.  Roll-A-Die Drawing:

My students absolutely LOVE drawing crazy pictures so much they barely notice that they are learning!  There are several sites that I love that have great ideas:

Roll-a-Doodle, Roll-a-Face, Roll-a-Landscape
Roll-a-Picasso
Roll-a-Monster


3.  Dice Games:

I wrote a post outlining some of my favorite dice games that help teach larger numbers.

Recently, I found these Yatzy Scorecards online.  Yatzy is so much fun as kids love to roll dice (the more the better!) and this game practices both small numbers (reading the dice aloud) as well as larger numbers (adding the dice and later on the scores together).

Another fun dice game is Qwixx. Its scorecard has minimal verbiage so I do not translate it into Spanish for my students.


4.  Card Games:

Uno, 7 ate 9, and different card games like Cinquillo or Crazy Eights are a lot of fun to practice smaller numbers.  I especially love teaching kids how to play Cinquillo as they are blown away by the Spanish deck of cards (Why doesn't it contain 8s and 9s???) and the card designs are so much fun.

Starting Over Once Again

So here we are, very slowly, more slowly than I would like, coming out of the cave and into the light. It was a long pregnancy but then I blinked and my newborn "POOF!" turned into a toddler!

So what have I been up to?  How have I begun to create a Spanish environment for little Freddie?

With my older boys, they were born so close together that I could almost treat them as twins.  When my eldest was about a year old, I began to speak to him only in Spanish (as did my husband) as a default language.  We would change to English when we were socializing with English speakers.  This continued until the boys were about 4 years old and we had to prepare them for Kindergarten entrance exams.  I switched over to English, and my husband continued to speak to them in Spanish.

As the boys have grown, more and more of their friends and schoolmates do not speak Spanish.  Even though they attend Spanish school Wednesday evenings and communicate with their father and abuelos in Spanish, it has gotten more difficult to keep the minority language going.

I want this to be easier for Freddie.

Lucky for me, this kid is a talker.

Lucky for me, this kid has two big brothers who adore him and love teaching him.


The following is a (very) basic roadmap as to how we have been introducing two languages to Freddie:

**  From birth to age 2, the entire family exclusively spoke to him in Spanish.  We sang songs in Spanish, read books (sometimes doing a spontaneous translation) in Spanish, watched videos from time to time in Spanish (he loved "Little Baby Bum").

**  At around 2 years old (he is 2.5 now), my boys and I started to speak English to him about 50% of the time.  We introduced English stories and songs, but kept the Spanish favorites.  We introduced the older brothers' favorite "Cantajuegos" and "Pocoyo", but also "Mr. Rogers" and "Llama llama".  We made playdates with both English and Spanish speaking friends.  We create rituals and daily rhythms (before nap time I tell him a story in English, but before bedtime the story is in Spanish) in both languages.

**  Every weekend, the abuelos and my boys have a video conference over the iPad for about 30 minutes to tell them about their week.  We also make it a priority to visit for 3-4 weeks every summer.

As far as special language materials go, at this stage, there are none to buy except books and music. We have a lot of these from when the older children were young and we try to use the local library.  Our challenge is finding authentic and original (not translated from English) materials.  I find that we often need to wait for our summer trip to Spain to buy these for the following year.

Freddie is really into imaginary play with cars, stuffed animals, and puppets, and that can be done in both English and Spanish.  Art projects can be done in both languages.  We go for walks and explore.

He is just beginning to be interested in "school" and sitting long enough to create something.  I am looking forward to guiding him in both languages and sharing my ideas with you!