Lots of Spanish 1 TPRS resources

So after the relative success of my last post about what I did with the commercial: "Me voy de casa", I decided to go ahead and share a majority of things that I did last year in my Spanish 1 classes.

Feel free to open the folder, download things to your Google Drive or to your computer and enjoy!

My hope is that you can find a new activity or a new spin on an old activity you have used. Or maybe something to inspire you as you try out more communicative-based teaching via TPRS or Comprehensible Input methods!

I tried to include a plethora of things to give you an idea of what you could do in your classes as well to push kids towards proficiency by de-emphasizing grammar in actual grammar lessons each day (Don't worry, I, Señor Jordan, still teach grammar to my kids. But it's more of a back-door approach!)

Let me know what you think and happy perusing!

So click here to see my google drive folder (minus Agentes Secretos stuff since some of that has images from the teacher's guide by the very talented Mira Canion).

*Disclaimer* Please don't judge me too much for how I might have done an activity. I am far from an expert on teaching via TPRS. But I figure the best way to get better is to share with others who might be farther back on the path to encourage them and maybe the more experienced people can offer a suggestion or two!

TPRS year 5 - Movietalk/Song - Celos

There is a song I discovered years ago and always found a way to tie it into storytelling because of the themes in it of romance and betrayal.  It also has a lot of good solid TPR words like body parts and concrete actions (kiss, look, walk, dance).  It is seriously the best song.

I just found out it's a remake, but either way, it's the only version I ever knew and it's called Celos.  Fanny Lu (Colombian singer) sings the remake and the video is even fun.

In previous years we did a cloze activity and watched the video.  This year, I have some targets I want to hit on structures (busca, encuentra, quiere hablar con, se cae, camina, sobre/hacia) and thought this would be the perfect way to introduce those before we read Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

So here's the activity I came up with.  Let me know what you think!

TPRS year 5 - Mi mascota es _____.

Here's a video/song to get you to talk about your students' pets and also get a little brain-break and music all in one.

While it might seem silly, yes I would probably do this in a high school class because in my opinion, high school students are often nostalgic for those activities they used to do in classes as kids.


Step 1: PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers)

Depending on the level of class, here are some Spanish 1 questions I would consider asking to practice some basic structures... in upper levels, you could use more complicated language:

¿Quién tiene una mascota?
¿Cómo se llama?
¿Es pequeño/a, grande o mediano?
¿Es bonito/a o feo/a?
¿De qué color es?
¿Te gusta tu mascota?
(maybe target action word you could ask about: what does it eat? / why is it special? /etc)

TPRS year 4 - song - pulgarcito

So I've been continuing doing a warm up, basic conversation, TPR and PQA for my 90 minute classes.  It's going ok.  I started trying to do brain breaks about 20 minutes into PQA and then we finish more refreshed.

I think it also reminds my students how important their attention is.

But today, for the brain break, I wanted to do something a little different.  I thought a change of pace would be to turn around to the projector (which is strangely at the back of my classroom). And then I made a very basic PowerPoint with the lyrics to the little song: "Pulgarcito".

This is a Spanish version of a song "Where is Thumbkin," which I had never heard of, but saw on an episode of Sesame Street.  In the Elmo's World section, there was a Spanish version of it called: "Pulgarcito."  It's to the tune of Frère Jacques.

Here are the lyrics I used, I changed it slightly for my students and added a gesture for, "¿Dónde estás?"

Pulgarcito  (hands behind back)
   Little thumb
¿Dónde estás? (put hand up over brow looking for someone)
   Where are you?
Aquí estoy. (bring out right hand, thumb up, moving to say "Aquí estoy")
   Here I am.
Aquí estoy. (bring out left hand, thumb up, moving to say "Aquí estoy")
   Here I am.
¿Cómo estás? (move right thumb as if talking)
   How are you?
Muy bien, gracias.  (move left thumb as if talking)
   Very well, thanks.
Ya me voy. (put right hand behind back)
   Gotta go.
Ya me voy. (put left hand behind back)
   Gotta go.

Then repeat as much as you want with students having them gesture and sing along/move their mouths so you don't know they aren't singing.

Most of my students seemed to enjoy it.  I saw them smiling.  Many of them are freshman/sophomores.  I think the simplicity of the language helped them and the fact that I explained how important music is in my classroom and how studies show how music can enhance learning a language.

Good activity!  Saving this one for later.

*revision: My mother swears she used to sing "where is thumbkin" to me when I was little (in English) but I don't have any recollection of it.

*revision #2: Some of my students will say "Ya me voy" as they leave class now in Spanish 1. 

TPRS year 3 - Agentes Secretos (teaching book)

So before Christmas, another Spanish teacher (at another small school) and I had planned out a unit of sorts for the first semester.  The goal was to teach the kids enough of the structures in the novel Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

The following is a reflection of the reading of the actual book as well as other activities that we did during the unit...

Went well:

• many students enjoyed reading a book and commented on that in their reflections on the unit
• students did well (minus a few outliers) on the test that was IN Spanish about the book and things that happened
• utilized different learning styles to help the kids understand the novel
• powerpoints with animations of characters 
• actors
• drawing
• reviewing
• the Native / Heritage speakers read the chapters for us as narrators

Improve on:

• doing more activities to vary review of chapters
• it seemed like we were rushing through the book near the end which made some kids uncomfortable
• start doing book a little earlier
• realize that not everyone likes reading
• talking about the students and linking language to them and their lives
• having students guess details in story...
• teaching the novel using reading strategies 

TPRS year 3 - Agentes Secretos - week 1

So this week we finally started reading Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso by Mira Canion in my Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 classes.  I thought it would be great for both levels and we could just do more in Spanish 2 with culture and embedded readings about history and culture to enhance the story.

This week for our TPRS structures and embedded reading, Josef Sallen (the teacher I'm planning this year with) had a great idea.  He decided to write an embedded reading about Francisco Franco (a dictator from Spain's history that also is mentioned in Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso).  It talked about how Francisco Franco is a boy and his dad is a soldier and Francisco later wants to be a soldier.  Then it gives some background about the Spanish Civil War and the two opposing sides in the war.

So it occurred to me that since we're going to be reading the novel and Joe had written the embedded reading about Franco, maybe we could find some other things from the era to help us go back in time and to understand the perspectives (that's national standards talk!).  So I found some propaganda posters that I showed for warm ups and had the students figure out which side they probably went with (the day after the embedded reading).  And on Thursday (on song day), we listened to Ay Carmela.  I saved a lesson plan about it.  It's a hymn for the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.  It talks about the Battle of the Ebro (arguably a somewhat important battle in the Spanish Civil War).

I did a history lesson about parts of the Spanish Civil War with a PowerPoint in Spanish halfway through class.  My kids actually seemed to enjoy it!  Who knew that they could enjoy history in Spanish class.  The best part is that it only helps us to further understand the backdrop for the novel Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

Then today (Friday) we read the first chapter of the novel.  I haven't done a novel reading before.  I asked my kids to be patient with me since I was trying something new this year in teaching them.  Then we read.  One of the neat things was we have many Spanish speakers in class and I asked if they wouldn't mind helping me read the Spanish since they're so much better at the language than me!  It went over wonderfully. The kids were able to follow along and read while someone spoke in Spanish with a native accent.

Some problems of course did occur:

1. some students no matter how easy you might try to make it just don't like reading
2. the readings are way too easy for Native / Heritage speakers
3. only a few kids really bought into helping translate the novel as we went through
• I would really love for all the students to get excited about understanding and helping out
• How can I create a classroom atmosphere that will be more comfortable for all students?

Some things that went well:

1. For most students, the structures in the book were way easy to translate and it helped with confidence (still confusion between quiere and tiene among some Spanish 1 students)
2. Native / Heritage speakers read out loud as we followed.  I asked them if they wouldn't mind helping me read since they spoke Spanish way better than me while we followed.  Most jumped to the task since I asked them to hold back on helping us translate today. 

Ideas for future:

A teacher had an idea to get my kids to participate more when reading, I could have assign the students into groups with a color or animal and then periodically only allow that group to answer the questions.  This could be a much better idea for those big classes where some kids monopolize the answering.

TPRS Year 3 - Halloween and Día de muertos

This year has been crazy.  I probably haven't been blogging as much as in years prior because I've been finding myself stretched rather thin.  Between working on my YouTube channel and trying to maintain consistently new content: Phrase of the Day, Storytelling adventures, & jokes, in addition to teaching full time and having a wife and 9 month old baby, I don't have as much time to blog. 

But I'm pretty excited.  Last year, there was this great activity idea that I got from Kristy Placido about using a Luis Pescetti chant about a vampire in a castle at night who butters bread with a knife.  It was wonderful.  What I ended up doing was TPR'ing the different phrases from the chant with my students by acting it, saying it in Spanish, and quickly telling them in English the first time and occasionally checking for comprehension.  We did them out of order (so the kids wouldn't guess it was a narrative) and then at the end, they saw Kristy's graphical representation of it (She might have taken it down.  I can't seem to find it this year).  It had pictures of some things which you could have with the voice of Luis Pescetti that represented the different lines.  My kids still remembered the actions from last year.  Not to mention, it was great to throw into stories, "And DOES he butter bread?"  Always good for a laugh.

This year I found out some traditional songs for Día de muertos.  My favorite was called: Los esqueletos.  There are various versions of it on YouTube.  The lyrics are about how skeletons come out of their graves and do various things, then they sleep again.  It's great for the present tense 3rd person plural ending in Spanish (-n).  It helps me get some reps of those in class and some good pop-up grammar to get them to notice that "n" on the end of the verb just means "they."

So I did something similar to last year's activity.  Since today was song day, I mixed up the different things the skeletons do (10 of them) and then TPR'd them.  So we went over 2-3 phrases and played around with them.  I mixed them up.  I changed a detail sometimes to use the verb structure some more.  My students seemed to enjoy the movement today.  I think it was needed.

Then after we TPR'd it for 25-30 or so minutes, I went over the PowerPoint that I had made with the song on it and some pictures that went along with it.  I taught them the gestures for the first line and for the "graves here" and "graves there."  I spoke through it with them first and had them do the gestures with me.  Then I sang it and had them follow with gestures.  Finally, they stood and "sang" (or pretended) while gesturing with me.  And it took up pretty much all of class.  It was a different activity for the songs.  We usually do a cloze activity.  But I wanted them to interact more with the song today. :-)

If you had extra time before singing you could also do a competition with a partner where they race to do the action first.  You could do the incorrect action.  You could say 2 actions and they would have to do those in order.  There are many things you could do as well.

Here's a version of the song that I basically used to sing today (and I changed a few of the things the skeletons do).

If you want to try it, let me know your email address and I can email you the PowerPoint and/or the lyrics I used.