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“Se acabo lo que se daba” the phrase that comes to my mind when ending this school year! My sweet Mom had many “dichos Cubanos” and now that she is no longer physically with me, it seems that I hear those sayings more and more in my head! Nothing defines this year more than this saying! We are ready to put this 2020-2021 “pandemic school year behind us, “dar por terminada una acción cuando no se puede o no se quiere seguir adelante con ella.” I started (or rather, re-started) blogging again to try and give my fellow colleagues some ideas and resources, and thoughts on how I was approaching my middle school classes this year. I know at times I was feeling overwhelmed by hybrid, online, or any of the other ways we had to try and teach this year. I hope to continue with this moving forward because I have found it also helps me, so thank you if you’ve been reading my posts!
8th Grade
My 8th graders talked about going to a restaurant (Capitulo 5B in Realidades 1/Autentico 1) and read a Flangoo digital reader titled “Los Chicos Pueden Cocinar” as an extension to our unit. It’s a short, pre-reader that’s fun and relatable. In years past at the end of this unit, we have taken a trip to a local Spanish restaurant to use our vocabulary and experience food culturally. This year, unfortunately, we were not able to do that, but I wanted to enhance our discussions about going to a restaurant by talking about the service and the food. With this reader, we talked about cooking, learning to cook, and talented chefs.
I introduced Los Chicos Pueden Cocinar by asking them how many liked to cook, all hands went up. I also asked how many of them have watched a cooking show on TV and many, if not all, mentioned Gordon Ramsay, Chopped, etc. All of my students expressed how much they liked either making some type of food or baking. I then showed them a clip of MasterChef Junior with Gordon Ramsay, as well as a short clip of MasterChef Junior España that I found on YouTube. We talked about the 2018 winner Esther Requeña. We then did a little research on Famous Latino Chefs.
Each chapter we read, I prepared questions and extension activities, if you are interested in what we did, you can find the resources on my Facebook Group Flangoo Digital Reader Users. I plan to continue using this page to post on what readers we are using in class and what we are doing next year.
This year I skipped the units on the house and shopping because I wanted them to use reflexives and the preterit. I know they will definitely be using it in Spanish 2 and 2H and almost all my students move on to level 2 after completing Spanish 1 in 7th and 8th grade. I introduced reflexives with a Google Slides Presentation, they took some notes and we practiced the structure with a Rutina Diara Interactive Google Slides activity, They did a fun Digital Mystery Picture Puzzle and then watched La Rutina de Nikolais to sequence our daily activities. Our 8th graders have several trips at the end of the year. One of them is a Dinner Dance. As an assessment, l assigned a presentational writing piece so they could talk about getting ready for their 8th Grade Dinner Dance. They found it to be very relevant and relatable and I was really impressed with their writing!
The last couple of weeks of school are very busy for the 8th graders, but I will be introducing the preterit and we will be talking about this past school year, I’m sure they will have a lot of interesting things to say!
7th Grade
My 7th graders have been talking about breakfast and lunch foods, using -er/-ir verbs in context and using me gusta(n)/me encanta(n). They loved using this digital mystery picture activity to review vocabulary. I also also includes questions for them to answer about the picture they reveal which helped to jumpstart conversations as well. Food is always a fun topic and 7th graders have definite opinions about food. I used these Google Interactive Slides to have them practice the me gusta(n)/me encanta(n) structure and it almost took a class period to get through because of how much they had to say!
To introduce -er/-ir verbs, I used El desayuno interesante de Roberto. Roberto is a reoccurring character that shows up to support the theme and grammar structures we are using. They ask about him all the time and are excited when a story about him shows up in a lesson. After we finished reading the story, I assigned them partners and they are writing about Roberto’s lunch. We will be working on that the Tuesday we return from Memorial Day. This will be winding down after that. My plans are to review what we learned this year.
This is where my 7th and 8th graders are right now. I will be winding down for summer break and will be sharing what I plan to do for the next school year sometime in August. For now, it’s time to relax, refresh and renew. Please follow my Facebook Page for updates on what I’m doing in class and join my Facebook Group for Flangoo Digital Reader Users where I post what I’m doing with the readers I am using, please join me!
If you are interested in any of my resources you can find them in my TpT Store.
I hope these ideas and resources are helpful to you. I hope that I have been able to and can continue 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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