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Felicia Sanchez 7/29/1932 – 1/22/2021
Before I begin this week’s post, I’d like to add something to my previous post Marcos y su Mascota. I am new to blogging, well not exactly new, but back at it after a long, long time. With the pandemic, teaching has become so incredibly difficult for all of us. My goal is to share ideas with others that are tied to a curriculum but would like to incorporate other resources to enhance instruction. If you blog, then you know that sometimes you write and then paste it to your site, or you write and edit and then edit again. I had scheduled the post to go live and was in the middle of editing when my mom passed away. I do not want to post about my personal life and this will be the first and last time. To me, my mother was an amazing and brave woman. A little spitfire (she was barely 5 feet tall) that emigrated to this country with my father after the 1959 revolution in Cuba. They came with nothing – only the clothes on their backs, and proceeded to make a new life in a foreign country, with no knowledge of its language and customs. I owe everything I am to them. She taught me many things in life, but the one thing that she always led by example is that you keep going. She would have wanted me to continue doing what I set out to do, so I’m back at it. Mami didn’t raise no fool.
It is never my intention to take credit for anything that I do not create and I believe that teaching is difficult enough without the support of each other. I am, therefore, taking the five minutes I did not have during one of the most difficult times in my life to give credit where credit is due. If you are here, thank you and I hope that I can inspire you and support you as well.
With that said, I was inspired to create a lesson for Marcos y su Mascota when I read a blog by profesoradelgadillo.com. I have been using Jamboard since the beginning of the school year and even gave a PD day at my school, but Profesora Delgadillo is the veritable guru of Jamboard and has some really amazing ideas and resources for its use, among other things that she does. I teach middle school so some of it is for higher levels, but her templates can definitely be adapted for use at the lower levels. If you haven’t done so yet, go check out her website.
¿Cómo eres? Adjetivos descriptivos…
Are you into bulletin boards? I used to not be. I would come in at the beginning of the school year decorate my class along with the one bulletin board in my classroom. That would be it, the same bulletin board up the entire year. It didn’t really bother me, I would have my different lessons for the holidays, but I didn’t even think about redecorating the bulletin board.
This year, something changed. At the end of the school year last year, I got a Cricut for my birthday. Oh wow, I am obsessed with making things! One of the ways I decided I was going to use it was to make designs for my bulletin boards. You’re probably wondering how my title fits together well – this is how I made all the pieces fit.
My 7th graders have been describing themselves and others and associating personality with likes and dislike (if you use Realidades/Autentico, that is Capitulo 1B). As I planned for this unit, I wanted to incorporate several resources that we could have fun with. The first thing we did after I introduced the vocabulary was have them work with a set of Google interactive slides (11 in all)
On each slide, they would choose the picture that best describes them (or not) and write a sentence about themselves. They also had to ask their partner (I partner my students based on proximity (the desk to the right or the left, behind or in front of them that is 6 feet apart from them) ¿cómo eres? and based on their partner’s answer we recycle también/tampoco, a veces, no es, etc. This activity allowed them to speak and stay socially distant, but in a normal year, my students would be partnered up and allowed to walk around the room.
Once we were done, there were a couple of snow days that were designated as remote learning, I decided to show them the movie Underdogs, available on Netflix. I showed it to them in Spanish and turned on the subtitles in English. This is a really cute movie with a really “good feel” message. We watched over a 3-day remote learning “snow event” and when we finished, I asked them to describe 6 characters from the movie. They were to use 3 adjectives per character, included es/no es… This activity was a lot of fun because these characters really lent themselves to the adjectives they were using.
You can find a free copy of the slides here: https://linktr.ee/middleschoolsenora and if you want to see how I led the conversation https://youtu.be/XlUvpa8mUtQ
Once they were comfortable describing themselves and others we did a quick review of definite and indefinite articles using these Google interactive slides I made. I initially used them as a Jamboard activity, but the sticky notes got too crowded and I felt that the interactive slides were more personalized and allowed me to review with them in context in class.
With Valentines Day quickly approaching I am very excited to create a bulletin board with my Cricut, but if you don’t have a Cricut and want a super cute bulletin board template, Mrs. Cabello’s Spanish Class has this one for free! Students are doing an activity where they have to describe themselves in a heart-shaped template both printed and virtually for my remote students. We will then compare the descriptions to “según mis amigos y según mi familia. When we are done, their hearts will go up on the bulletin board, where they can read them.
This post is about my 7th graders. I find it easier to flip-flop the grades when blogging what I’m doing in class but if you’re looking for something to do with eighth-graders for Valentines Day: El Día de San Valentin- Un poema de amor is a lot of fun I have been using this resource for a couple of years.
I hope these ideas and resources are helpful to you. It is my hope that I have been able to contribute and help in any way I can. We are all in this together. Let us support each other!
Hasta la próxima!
Find all my links here: https://linktr.ee/middleschoolsenora
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