It's almost time for the beautiful celebration of Día de los Muertos! This is my first year working in an elementary school during this holiday and I am excited to do a few activities and get the students interested. To begin, I asked my principals if I could set up a school wide altar at the entryway of the school and was told absolutely! They also asked that I send a letter out to parents telling them about the altar and inviting them to send a photo to add along with making sure they were ok with their kid participating in activities in my class. 

For the altar I used things that I have accumulated over the years from my high school days including a day of the dead table cloth (plastic/fabric backed from walmart), electric candles, a bowl of salt and water, fake orange and yellow flowers (I think they are daisies but they work) and printed out photos a few famous Hispanics along with some of my loved ones. I backed the photos with orange paper and made a makeshift stand using the same paper. To make it tiered I used a small table and a cardboard box. To decorate the wall behind it I created a mural activity and had students color the pieces. I also made an informational bulletin board print out to post around the edges of the mural.

I love how it turned out and it is up just in time for parent teacher conferences this week so parents can see it. If you want a copy of my bulletin board facts and parent letter you can get them for FREE linked below. The mural is available on my TPT store with the link below as well.​

In regards to what I am doing with students for the holiday, I created two different presentations including videos and images to introduce the holiday and what it means along with some basic vocabulary. One is for 3rd-5th and the other is for K-2. They are pretty similar but the older one has a section discussing how Mexicans view death in comparison to Americans which I thought might be a difficult thing to discuss with super littles. Both presentations end with a craftivity. 3-5 will make papel picado and K with make calavera masks. If you are interested in purchasing my lessons complete with presentation, lesson plan and printables you can find them on my TPT store using the link below. You can also find a few additional free activities for students related to Day of the Dead on my TPT including a digital drag and drop/bitmoji activity.

We're slowly but steadily making our way through our lessons with Alex the Alpaca in my K-3 level classes and the kids are loving it! They definitely look forward to their time with Alex and even though I only see them once a week I am noticing growth in their knowledge and understanding of the language.

Today the lesson focused on different types of weather and clothing items needed. It reviewed content from previous lessons covering seasons and months. Students were given new vocabulary using a presentation that included videos, gifs, songs, and discussion in the target language using Alex. We wrapped up the lesson with a listening activity where students were given a large Alex paper and various items of clothing for him to wear. Then, they listened to my description of the weather and the clothing items he needed and put the correct clothing items on top of him to "dress" him for the weather. 

The kids loved the activity and by the end had gained a pretty good ability to describe basic clothing and weather. They ended class with a worksheet that we did together where they drew the clothing items onto him based on the images/text in each box using the worksheet pictured below and pasted the correct words next to each scene.

You can purchase the entire unit focusing on climate at my TPT store using the link below!

Hello! I started this site to share all of the amazing things I am doing with my elementary Spanish classes. When I made the decision to transition from high school Spanish to elementary I was nervous but also excited. After teaching at the high school level for fifteen years I had begun to question my future in education. I, like many other educators during the pandemic, was feeling burnt out, unappreciated and often attacked for simply trying to do my job. After dealing with hateful parents, micromanaged work environment and students who would rather do anything than learn I began thinking about ways to move to a new career path. In the fall of 2020, smack dab in the middle of a terrible pandemic, my family and I moved across the country from Arkansas to Colorado. This move wasn't entirely about me but and was mostly due to my husband's job. However, I was more than ready for a change.

When we realized we were moving I began searching for a job. But, finding a teaching job in the middle of the school year is no easy task. I ended up only finding jobs for elementary schools. While this was a bit daunting seeing as I had never taught elementary, I needed a job. So, I applied for any that I was eligible for in the district that, after a lot of research, I decided was the best option for me and my family. I ended up being offered three jobs and had my choice of them! The school I chose to work for is a Spanish immersion school with students in K-5th grades. 

After always being a department of one with no one to collaborate or share ideas with at my school I moved into a building full of Spanish speakers with a focus on incorporating culture and language in all levels! It was exciting but, I didn't have any idea how to teach elementary age kids! I began searching for ideas, curriculum maps, and lessons. Anything that could guide me to ways to create lessons for younger students and, unfortunately, I had a hard time finding anything that fit my aesthetic and goals. Most things were either too advanced, too simple or too cutesy for the students I would be teaching. Good luck trying to get a 3rd grader excited about nursery rhyme focused lessons!

I spent my first semester cobbling together lessons that worked and forming a better understanding of what my students needed and how to teach them. I had never thought about how difficult it would be to teach 5 year old's who can't read! During that time I worked on the "good" lessons that I would be using in the next school year. 

A Passport to Spanish & Spanish for Littles are both classroom tested and have proven successful with my students. They were designed to engage beginning language learners who know nothing as well as students who are more advanced in their language skills. This is because even though the school I work at is an immersion school, it is tiered by grade. So, each grade has a non-Spanish class, a 25% of the time Spanish class and a 50% of the time Spanish class. This means I have a wide variety of student needs and knowledge. I chose lesson topics that include some basics in combination with other content to ensure that no one is lost or bored.

In this blog I will share cool things I am doing and give readers insight into how my lessons work with actual students in the classroom. I hope you will join me on this journey and look forward to any and all questions and comments that may arise.