Have you seen Suno.com yet? It is pretty wild. It is an AI site that will create short songs for you. Currently, my Spanish 3 classes are doing a unit around the movie Pachamama (thank you Arianne Dowd and Amanda Benavidez-Williams for your ideas and resources). So I put in this prompt, which includes vocabulary from the unit, the name of our school and the name of the town that the school is in. A rap song about Pachamama and a small school in the village (vocabulary word in the movie) of Andover. The school called Proctor. Use the words aldea, cultiva, cuida, huaca  (voc ..read more

I used to create a ton of resources and share here (mostly for free)... I posted and shared resources 176 times from 2017-2020!  but post-covid I was just spent. However, with a change of school and location, I am happy to back at it - and excited about creating resources and sharing them here. While I love "teaching Spanish", I think what I really actually love is "teaching about the Spanish speaking world in Spanish"... and then seeing two things: Students learning how to communicate in the three modes of communication in Spanish  Students increasing their Inte ..read more

 I am at a new (amazing) school this year, so I am still learning about the school's culture and about my students' abilities. This year I am teaching Spanish 1 and Spanish 3. We have trimesters, so I am giving final exams this week.  My Spanish 3 students just took their Final yesterday and today and I feel really good about the assessment and how they did (I have graded all the speaking section and 1/3 of the listening/writing/intercultural section). I thought I would share the assessment here because it could be used for a variety of classes. The first part was a Caja de Identidad ..read more

 Have you seen this Diego Torres song?  It came out a few months ago, but Carrie Toth just brought it back on my radar. She created some great activities for the song. You can find them here.  But I wanted to something for my Spanish 1 students when they come back to class with three weeks away from Spanish (break + Project Period week), so I created this slideshow and some other activities. You can find them below or linked here and here.  width="900"> ..read more

Have you seen the book Arroz con cosas? If not, I highly recommend it! I just finished it with my Spanish 1 students and they will be getting ready for the assessment soon. Students really enjoyed the book and I did too! In addition to enjoying the story, my Spanish 1 students acquired LOTS of great vocabulary and grammatical structures. There isn't a Teacher's Guide (yet?), so I am sharing what I created to use with book: click here. I don't have as much time as I used to (new school!), so I hope to add to it the next time... or have others add, enhance and share back! There are LOTS of oppo ..read more

 I LOVE Ana Tijoux and her music and have for a long time.  My sixth blog post on this blog in 2013 (!) was about a unit that centered on her song "Shock" and that evolved tremendously to include the song "Cacerolazo".  I also love to use "1977" to quickly teach students some numbers (just have students sing "mil novecientos setenta" many times and they won't stumble as much on some of those big numbers!) Well, she is (finally back) with this amazing song and video: The lyrics are so positive and joyful! I hope to use it soon, so I created a few activities to use with the ..read more

I LOVE Bad Bunny (not as much as Dr. Vanessa Díaz, the woman who created this amazing course, but a lot!) and have been a fan since his first album in 2018. But, I haven't used any of his songs because there is always something that makes me say, "Oh, nope, not this one!" If you feel the same way, but really want to teach an upper level class something about Bad Bunny, read on! If not, thanks for checking in :)  I watched Bad Bunny's documentary "Aquí vive gente"(don't use the music video at the beginning in class) last year when it came out last year and really wanted ..read more

I am starting at a new school this year and I am very excited!  I am thinking a lot about how to start the year off with my new students in a new setting that is pretty different from the one I have been at for the last 18 years.  These are some of my goals for the first few weeks (and beyond really): I want my students to LIKE and ENJOY Spanish class. I want to ENGAGE students. I want to give students LOTS of INPUT. I want students to feel SUCCESSFUL. I want students to ACQUIRE some language. I want to have JOY in the classroom. I want to create COMMUNITY. I want students to unders ..read more

I am starting to watch Go! Vive a tu manera with my Spanish 4 class this week. Now that we are back "full in", I am really looking forward to dedicating every Friday to watching (and talking and reading about!) the show. It is such a nice way to end the week. This time around, I want to incorporate some more culture as we watch. So, I am starting with learning about a staple of Argentinian culture: el mate! This video gives a simple, comprehensible explanation: So, with that as the starting point, students will do this sequence of input activities:  Edpuzzle the video above  ..read more

I am back to school "full in" (with three feet social distancing, masks, and teachers vaccinated). It is has been two weeks and oh my goodness, what a difference! It is so much easier than hybrid! I have been so happy to have Voces: Nuestra Historia this year for my AP Class and for my Spanish 4 class. One thing in particular that I love is that I have novels to choose from because they are embedded in the digital textbook (so much bang for your buck!): El último viaje (in level 3), Los sobrevivientes (in level 3), Secretos (in level 4), and El carterista de Pamplona (in level 4 ..read more