Nothing like a good chat mat to support student conversations on the first days back to school after holiday break! No need to stress over planning–this resource can work for beginners through advanced students to spark ideas and scaffold their skills. It’s also a great tool to help establish (or re-establish) connections and community within your classroom. I updated a winter-themed chat mat and plan to roll it out this week. Students will want to talk to their classmates, so let’s help them do what they want to do in Spanish!  Download a copy of the chat mat here: weekend-chat-placemat-wint ..read more

Goldfish icons created by Freepik – Flaticon The Fishbowl strategy has been around education for quite a while to promote speaking, interaction, and peer feedback between students. While there were many things that appealed to me about the activity, there were some aspects that I didn’t feel were good fits for our classroom culture. However, after a discussion with a Fishbowl veteran teacher, I made some changes to the classic structure of the activity that I think made it work for us–especially as part of our preparation for the IB Standard Level IA assessment. I’m sharing this activity here ..read more

Kelly Gardner shared the idea of a Cultural Comparison round table in a Facebook group for AP Spanish teachers. With her permission, I adapted the idea for my classes and am sharing it here. We are at the end of a unit about the role of grandparents and the impact of technology/social media on our lives. These topics combine for a wide range of comparisons, and create a great set up for the round table format. Students had many positive things to say about the activity, especially about how it is a confidence booster. Here are some of their post-activity comments: Here is the process that I u ..read more

The Lotería de Navidad commercials are some of my favorite authentic resources to use in class each year–and this year is no exception. They are rich stories that are great conversation starters and though they are linked with Christmas, the message of each video is about community and sharing rather than a religious message. My favorite of all time is from 2015, Justino. This year is no exception. Set in Madrid, it continues the tradition of short films telling big stories. In collaboration with my dear friend and amazing colleague Maris Hawkins, we have prepared a unit built around this year ..read more

I’ve been teaching AP for about 10 years now, and each year has been different from the last. I continue to refine and try to improve my teaching practice, and therefore the learning experience for my students. Just when I thought I had hit my stride, COVID changed everything! This past year was normal-ish, but at the end of the year I found that students were struggling to be in touch with the content that we had studied early in the year. Our class takes place on alternate days all year long, so the gap between the start of the year and the AP exam in May can be long. Lots of our work was in ..read more

The song Patria y Vida is causing quite a sensation throughout the Spanish-speaking world. It is a fantastic resource to accompany the book Casa Dividida and a deeper dive into Cuba, especially with upper level students. Here are some resources to help teachers dive in to the topic: A bit of background information for teachers: Brief intro/overview Alt.Latino podcast Activities for students–aimed at students in upper level courses (approximately intermediate mid): Interpretive reading–pre-listening: background before the song Song activity pack–including running dictation pre-listening patria ..read more

I am a huge fan of well-designed activities that are versatile enough to be adapted across units, levels, and languages as a way of reducing my workload while still creating a challenging learning environment for students. Cupside Down is one of those activities and we just played it for the first time yesterday. I learned about the game from Carrie Toth at Somewhere to Share–find the explainer & directions here. Preparation took me about 20 minutes total: about 10 minutes writing questions and another 10 creating a slide deck to introduce the game to students. Next time will be less becau ..read more

In the AP Spanish Language & Culture course, one of the free response questions is for students to write an essay arguing a position on a topic while integrating three provided resources in their essay. This is a tall challenge for students at this age, and even more so when doing this in another language After struggling through this process for years without much success–but with much stress and occasional tears–I reached out to some ELA colleagues and resources for recommendations on how to improve this process for students AND for me. At the time, I had approximately 90 students in AP ..read more

A quick activity for AP Spanish Language + Culture built around the concept of offering/responding to an invitation to a World Cup Watch Party in the form of a directed conversation. This is actually two activities in one: we start with doing the conversation as a text conversation to work through how to do the task and what kinds of things are required. Then we do it in the classic form with students responding to the spoken prompts (which are the content of the first column of the text conversation). I have found that approaching this FRQ in this manner has been very helpful in boosting stud ..read more

Hello blog, it’s been a while! One of the common themes in my classes is that we have so much good stuff to explore, but never enough time. This spring I was trying to decide which comprehensible readers we were going to read in my Spanish 4 class. Faced with the decision of Selena or Santana, I chose… both. While at various points I questioned the wisdom of my decision, it turned out well. Here’s how we did it: About 2 weeks before I wanted to start reading, I book talked both books, telling students a bit about both–that both had glossaries to support them, they were approximately the same ..read more