Teaching Spanish to Elementary Students should not be that stressful. Unfortunately there are some myths about teaching Spanish to early age students. Teachers planning for elementary level students have a lot of questions. In this blog post we are going to start debunking 4 common myths about teaching Spanish in elementary.
Is dancing and performing required?. What about crafts and high energy activities?. Do I need to purchase all DVDs in Spanish?
The answer is no, no, no and no. Let’s start.
About singing, dancing and performing in your Spanish class with your elementary age students.
Students love learning when their teacher loves teaching. That’s it!. If you do not feel like doing the cute dance for your classroom, do not do it. If you are teaching elementary age students, they will notice you are not comfortable with the activity. That is not fair to you.
Your students can still participate in the dance, brain break or movement activity. Here is what you can do instead: you can always play a video of someone DOING the activity (say, a dance) so your students can copy it and perform it themselves. One of my favorite teachers with great ideas about brain breaks and movement is Profe Valentina. Make sure to check the activities she has for elementary students learning Spanish.
About crafts and projects for your elementary students.
If you teach in elementary you HAVE to do cutesy crafts? Not really. If the main objective is to make something pretty because you have an empty bulletin board. You can skip it. If the main objective is to practice commands, build classroom community and get to know your students, go ahead and make it part of your lesson.
Personally, I see my kids once a week for 30 minutes. Teaching Spanish to Elementary Students means sometimes you are running short of time. This is why, we do crafts maybe once or twice during the whole school year. Elementary age students already do a lot of these in their own classrooms. If you make a craft activity, make sure your objective is aligned to your lesson.
Especially if it is back to school season, make sure to read a good Back to School book before embarking in glitter and glue crafts.
Do my elementary students need high energy level activities all the time?
There is this idea that teaching Spanish means SUPER HIGH energy. But the reality is, is not always like that. Remember that your classroom has a mix of students who enjoy high energy and low energy activities. Make sure you are catering to both groups. My dear friend Carolina is always sharing movement and calming activities for teachers to use in class with their students.
Do I need to purchase all the DVDs in Spanish and subscriptions for my lesson planning in elementary?
Absolutely no. Today you can find a videos geared towards your elementary students in your Spanish classroom. Once you find these videos, you can create easy lessons and activities based on these age appropriate videos.
One of my favorite You Tube channels is Teacher Catalina. My classroom enjoyed one of her videos about “La Casa“. Her video not only showed a complete tour of her house, but it also included a short test once the video was over.
You can find age and level appropriate videos and create activities based on them. Not only worksheets, but re-telling stories, creating a similar video or writing a short video script. The possibilities are endless.
Make sure to check out what these amazing educators have to offer. Is there another myth we need to debunk? Let me know in the comments.
Resources for you
First Week of Spanish – Review – Repaso Primera Semana
This resource includes everything you need for your first week of Spanish. This resource is packed with interactive notebooks, task cards, worksheets and more activities for your novice Spanish class.
Topics included:
- Greetings
- All About Me
- Months of the Year
- Days of the Week
- Weather
- Seasons
This document includes the following:
- Task Cards Storage Tips
- Greetings and Salutations Task Cards
- Introducing Ourselves Flipbook
- Greetings and Salutations Matching Cards
- Greeting People in Spanish Worksheet
- Seasons and Months Matching Game
- Months of the year and Days of the week Task Cards
- Days of the Week and Months of the Year Puzzles
- Birthdays in my Classroom Worksheet
- Months of the year Walking Galleries
- Days of the week Walking Galleries
- Weather Task Cards
- Seasons Flipbooks
- Seasons Matching Cards
- All About Me Poster Prompts
- Creating my monster activity
- Find a friend who worksheet
- Vocabulary Lists
- Final Assessment (no word bank)
- Final Assessment (with word bank)
- Answer keys
Leave a Reply