You can probably admit to using Instagram for mindless scrolling after a long day of teaching. You see travel destinations you desire to visit, fixer-upper home improvement projects that you add to your never-ending to-do list, and that delicious dinner idea that makes your stomach growl. And you know your students are doing the same thing! How can you use Instagram in Spanish class or any other world language lesson? You may be surprised, but this social media platform provides countless opportunities! You can use Instagram in Spanish as an authentic resource, project-based learning, and as a form of comprehensible input.
Authentic Resources
An authentic resource is a text (video, audio, text, etc.) created by a native speaker for a native speaker. Therefore, Instagram accounts from native speakers fit perfectly into this category! When looking for authentic resources for novice learners, we tend to struggle, but we can easily turn to social media for #authres because posts tend to be short and concise.
Use authentic resources by having students follow Spanish Instagram accounts, such as museums, travel destinations, athletes, musicians, restaurants, and more! Check out some of my favorites below. They each have Instagram Spanish captions. Your students can complete this FREE Instagram template for students to report on who they follow and their favorite posts.
Project Based Learning
Your students can create Instagram accounts based on anything you are learning! This project can be either digital or hard-copy. You can have students make an Instagram account based on your current content. For example, if you’re teaching a travel unit, then students make a tourism account for that country or destination. One of my Spanish 2 students made an Instagram account for visiting Costa Rica and posted images of things you can see when traveling there. In my level 4s, they were learning about the Aztec and Inca empire. Students made accounts for Inca warriors and added images of their weapons, clothing, family life, religion, and more! Some made accounts acting as tourist companies promoting ruins like Machu Picchu. Encourage creativity with hashtags, Instagram captions in Spanish, and fun bios with emojis. One of my favorite digital templates comes from Cynthia Nixon.
Comprehensible Input
When using comprehensible input, you want to use a lot of images to teach vocabulary. I have been using comprehensible input a lot this year to teach about different countries, the rainforest, and animals in danger of extinction. Let me give you an example, in Spanish 2, we learned about sloths, and how they are being captured illegally and brought to tourist centers so tourists can take pictures with them. Unfortunately, this gives sloths severe anxiety and threatens their life span. It can be hard to find images that represent this concept, but you can follow the sloth sanctuary on Instagram and show your students actual video footage and images of the sloths thriving in sanctuaries that rescue sloths!
So grab your FREE Instagram template for students so you can use Instagram in Spanish class today!
Be sure to also follow me on Instagram @llearningllama to see how my students have used Instagram and for tons of other resources and tips.
