When stores put out the “Back to School” displays, it always makes me cringe. I’m never ready to see that, especially in July! But as we approach the beginning of September, I am always on the lookout for something new to spice up my Spanish classroom.
Dry Erase Story Blocks
Students can draw objects or write words on each side of the cube. Then, they can work in small groups or as a whole class to roll the cubes and write creative stories linking together the words. The benefit of the dry erase is that you can always change them up, they can be connected to your current unit, and the students take a part in developing the content of the story. For a more grammar-centered activity, write the different subject pronouns on each side.
TellTale Cards
We always have those classes that just don’t go as planned. We need a plan in our back pocket that we can always go to when we’re struggling to fill the end of the class. I love TellTale cards. They are double-sided cards with a different image on each side. I usually put my students in small groups and pass out a few cards. They are instructed to write a story using the images they receive. You can work on a specific grammatical concept, too! Maybe preterite tense, concordancia, or pronouns.
Home Depot White Boards
These large white boards (2 ft. x 4 ft.) are perfect for gallery walks, presentational writing activities, illustrations, brainstorming, and error correction. I use them almost every week. Rather than use large flip charts, which are crazy expensive, these boards cost $10 each and last forever!
Highlighters
This may sound like a no-brainer, but I’m trying something new this year. I bought a few packs of different colored highlighters. I will give a few to each group of students and as we learn grammar concepts or peer edit student work, students will use the highlighters to search for certain things: Use pink to highlight all nouns, green for all verbs, yellow for adjectives. Or elements of concordancia in pink, preterite in yellow, and imperfect in blue. It will be a great visual representation of the text!
Let us know what your favorite items are for your World Language classroom!
