Practice number recognition and Spanish vocabulary with this printable Spanish I Have Who Has Game! So fun for early math and literacy practice!
Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.
Last week, Maryellen Moreau, creator of Story Grammar Marker®, consulted with two special educators in southern Connecticut about a student with Autism. This particular child’s evaluation recommended Story Grammar Marker® as an intervention. The school hired Maryellen to work with this child’s teachers as well as larger groups of staff in the school to get everyone on board with the SGM® methodology. During our first session last week, one special educator looked up at Maryellen and with awe in her voice said, “This is just so amazing. It is so simple…yet so, so deep. I know I will be able to do so much with this – with so many different students. How did you EVER think of this?” The answer to that question is that it happened in the late 1980s while Maryellen, a speech language pathologist, was Curriculum Director at the Curtis Blake Day School in Springfield, MA (a private placement for children with dyslexia and language learning disabilities)...
Our top 5 resources for an engaging, gentle introduction to kindergarten Spanish lessons that are EASY to each and fun for your little one!
Do you know what cognates are? Do you use them in your classroom? If you have ELLs in your classroom (even if you're not a bilingual teacher) you should be using them!! Or maybe you are a Dual Language teacher and have students learning Spanish? Use cognates!! For some strange reason my students adore that little word and we talk about it EVERY SINGLE DAY in our classroom. If you were to come into my classroom and ask one of my students what cognates are, they would simply say: words that sound about the same in English or Spanish and share a similar meaning. That's it! Pretty easy to understand...right? Let's see some examples from the Cognates Wall in my classroom: Some cognates are spelled the same in English and Spanish, some others aren't and that's ok. Like I tell my kids: as long as they sound close to another word and they remind you of a word in Spanish. Why should I use cognates in my classroom? Cognates are a super powerful strategy to use with ELLs. They are able to make a connection between the two languages and build their comprehension. Every time we are getting ready to read a new text, I immediately ask my students to look for cognates and underline them. Other times, while my students and I are talking, a cognate will come up. I usually say very quickly and excited: THAT'S A COGNATE!! Eventually, the kids start telling me when they find one and it becomes an exciting little game! WATCH OUT FOR FALSE COGNATES!! Unfortunately there are some words that appear to be cognates but they aren't. Remember that cognates have a similar sound and definition. Some words sound the same in English and Spanish but they DO NOT share the same definition. For example: the word embarrassed is usually misused by bilingual students because it sounds similar to "embarazada" in Spanish which means pregnant! We certainly don't want our kids misusing that word lol! The word carpet in English is similar to "carpeta" in Spanish. However, "carpeta" means folder. If you are going to teach cognates to your kids, you gotta watch out for these tricky words. Remember, when in doubt, just Google it! If you tell your students about false cognates they will be aware and understand not all words are cognates! And let me tell you... they will LOVE to find those false cognates. Here is a link to my favorite list of cognates. (By the way Colorin Colorado is an amazing website with very helpful articles on teaching ELLs). I use this list every day! Remember to talk to your students about false cognates, they will learn to recognize them faster than you think!
Bilingual early literacy centers are fun to set-up to foster reading and life-long readers. Explore these tips to encourage reading anywhere.
These Spanish vowel songs teach the essential sounds of the language. As they sing, children learn to recognize the consistent sounds of a, e, i, o, u and learn to produce them correctly. In addition to helping kids acquire accurate Spanish pronunciation, this is an important part of learning
Simple 5 Question System for Choosing Preterite vs. Imperfect As Spanish teachers, we all know that one of the trickiest topics to teach is how to choose between the preterite and imperfect tenses. For years, I watched students struggle with this concept, and to be honest, when I was a newer Spanish teacher, I had
Teaching phonics is an important aspect of a literacy program. This is especially true for ELLs. Phonics is the relationship between sounds and the letter or letters used to write them. Phonics connects sounds with letters and combinations of letters. In the English language, there are 26 letters and 44 sounds (called phonemes). A grapheme
If you teach Spanish reading to beginning readers in the USA more than likely you are expected to teach high frequency words. Here are 3 things you may want to keep in mind when teaching these words: 1. Spanish high frequency words are not sight words. Sight words in English, are words that usually cannot be decoded phonetically or 'sounded out'. Because of this, we teach children to recognize them by 'sight’ that is, to memorize them. Spanish however, is a mostly phonetic language, words are decodable. They don’t need to be learned by ‘sight’. Because many sight words are also the most frequently used words in the English language, the terms sight words and high frequency words tend to be used interchangeably. That, I think, is the cause of the confusion. While we don't have sight words in Spanish, we do have words that are used more frequently than others. 2. There isn't one particular list of Spanish high frequency words that is 'the right list' for everyone. Now this might be my own personal opinion but I've looked at lots of Spanish HFW lists. When teaching reading in English the Dolch or the Fry word lists are the most commonly used. When teaching reading in Spanish however, there seems to be a multitude of different lists used. Some words are found in most lists, others are not. You can find some of the popular lists here: Real Academia Española CREA Spanish Pronto I Teach Dual Language Another popular source is 'la lista' found in this book: LA LISTA is a list of 'words most frequently used in Spanish basal reading programs in the U.S.' compiled by Hampton-Brown. Although it was published in 1989 I believe it is probably not very different from what we'd find in more recent published basal readers. These two books are Spanish frequency dictionaries and are also usually cited: And of course there are also lists provided by school districts and basal readers publishers. 3.Your students will eventually learn to decode all their high frequency words. Some of the high frequency words have decoding patterns that are introduced later in the teaching sequence. Introducing those words as just high frequency words will give students a wider range of opportunities for reading and writing in the earlier stages of learning. However, you can learn to read in Spanish with the syllabic method without necessarily using this strategy. I know a lot of people that have learned that way. I am one of them!
New and even seasoned teachers have a lot of questions about the best ways to implement centers in their classroom. If you work in a bilingual, dual language or Spanish immersion elementary school, it is very common to see centers during literacy and math blocks. Some Spanish immersion schools follow particular programs such as the ... Read More about Concerns about Starting Centers in Your Bilingual Classroom
I want the technology I integrate to fit with my curriculum—not the other way around. Here are 5 ways I use Flipgrid in the classroom.
Learn how to practice rhythms with this budget-friendly and fun rhythm game in your elementary music classroom.
Language Ladders are words or phrases that are linked together because of a common function or meaning. For example, different words or phrases to express degrees of liking or not liking something…
Have you ever wondered how we acquire language? Do you know what language acquisition means? Do you know the difference between first language acquisition and second language acquisition? In this post we talk about the 5 stages of Second language acquisition: 1. Silent or receptive phase 2. Early production 3. Speech emergence or production 4. Intermediate fluency5. Continued language development or fluency.
Aren’t comics cool? They use interesting characters, action, and graphics to make the story come alive. Spanish comics make excellent reading material for kids learning the language. Rockalingua is now creating Spanish comics for language learners. In addition to print, they are making the comics available in a video
Fantastic picture books in Spanish. This is a great resource to have for English Language Learners, for bilingual school programs, or just for fun.
Need some guidance for teaching preschool Spanish? You’re in the right place! Young children are the perfect age to soak up a new language. I'm currently raising my own three kids bilingually, and have taught classes to this age group as well. It's never too late to start, and 3-5 year olds are really fun to teach! In this post I've compiled my favorited strategies for you. To get started in learning Spanish together, you Can Do three things: 1. Outline some beginning topics. You can create your own list, with common preschool topics (think numbers, colors, greetings, etc.)Take a
An important way to build relationships in your classroom is with a morning meeting. One of the components of morning meeting is a “game.” As a Spanish immersion teacher, I am always looking for easy, quick games that can be used during this portion of the day. I often use equity sticks and let the ... Read More about 12 Morning Meeting Games in Spanish
Teaching multisensory math techniques as well as incorporating multisensory math activities into lesson plans is not only best practice for students
Typical uses of anchor charts in bilingual literacy centers to boost student reading interaction, classroom procedures, and visual reminders.
Freedom Homeschooling lists free high-quality homeschool foreign languages curriculum for all grades. Over 100 foreign languages available!
In today's post, I'll share ideas and free materials for teaching beginning Spanish phonics. I'll cover letter sounds, open syllables (sílabas abiertas), syllables with blends (sílabas trabadas), and closed syllables (sílabas cerradas).
I mean...why WOULDN'T you use cootie catchers in your reading block? It makes perfect sense. Ok - remember last week how I was talking about doing a little spring cleaning with some of my TpT resources? Well, I did a little spring cleaning in my file folders on my computer as well. Yikes. Now THAT'S a bit of a rabbit hole. I got in a little deeper than I wanted to, but I figured I might as well finish the job. I got rid of a lot (a LOT) of cringe worthy products that just didn't make the cut anymore, and I got some major organizing done as well. BUT - you know what I found? THIS >>> It's a reading comprehension cootie catcher that I TOTALLY forgot I made! And since it resurfaced for me - I thought I'd resurface it for you! I'm sure I made it for you guys in the first place, but I can't for the life of me find it anywhere on the blog. There's actually 3 different versions. They have different comprehension questions that can be used with any fictional book. They work great as a quick partner review game. You can download them here! Find any long-lost things in your spring cleaning, lately? Pin and Share this freebie:
Have you ever tried Spanish audiobooks to improve your language skills? Learn why and how you can do so with our list of recommendations for any level.
Our speech therapy materials are applicable, user-friendly, and research-based. Increase student success and improve your diagnosis with these resources.
The bottomline in knowing how to teach kids with dyslexia to read is that there are methods and approaches that have been proven to work and those that haven't.
Check out our blog post which discusses verb errors in Spanish speakers. Learn common mistakes observed in second-language learners.
Inside: Spanish vocabulary games for the language classroom. The best way to “learn vocabulary” is in context. I use to give long lists of isolated words, until I switched to proficiency-based teaching and threw out my textbook. I realized my students were memorizing the words to pass a quiz, and then forgetting them. Our students really need to see
This is a printable dual language / dual immersion / Spanish resource that you can print for students to use while reading. It includes reading CAFE strategies and sentence frames to use to either begin responding to their reading orally or in written form. This is a great tool to laminate and let students keep in their book boxes. I see my students use this tool all the time! How to Use This Resource: whole group small group great for a substitute special education (SPED) bilingual or Dual Language / DLI classrooms with ELLs for ESL instruction Great for K, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade Your kindergarten, first grade, second grade, or third grade students will love this story! ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ ✰ ✭ You May Also Like: Comprehensive Literacy Language Workshop Plan for Oliver Button is a Sissy 1st Grade Common Core Reading Standards Rubrics Dual Language Reading Resource using CAFE and Sentence Starters
There are six ACTFL Core Practices that serve as guide for teachers as they teach toward increased foreign language proficiency in their classrooms. One of the key core practices is designing commu…
Inside: Reading Activities for Spanish Class, from Ashley Mikkelsen at Srta. Spanish. This year, I’ve been working hard to shift my mindset away from grammar-focused instruction to providing my students with more comprehensible input. (Check out this post for a great explanation on what comprehensible input is, exactly!) In the journey of incorporating more comprehensible input based activities
Use graphic organizers to guide your students through the entire
I LOVE using centres with my students! My students love them, and will choose many of the centres to play during indoor recess instead of lego and other toys. It rained this week and one of my boys chose to build with magnets on cookie trays! Setting clear routines is the most important part. Take the time to teach the games to your students so that they understand how to play properly. If they haven't mastered the French vocab, then you will have behavioural and focus issues come up. With younger students, make sure you practice the game as a whole class many times before you introduce it as a centre. Set-up: I use the cards from my "j'ai fini" board as the centre rotation cards, as the centres are all things they can also choose to do if they finish their work early. I recently updated the file to include centre group cards, so you can write their names on the group # cards to set up your groups before they come to class. Normally my "j'ai fini" board is set up like this: Since they're on magnets, it's really easy to move them over to the other side of my whiteboard to set up the centres. I line them up vertically and put the group # cards beside them. I have each centre set up on a table group (except bug in a rug, they play on the carpet). I review the rules of each centre with them, and the CLEAN UP rules. We talk about what each centre should look like when it's been properly cleaned up. They get started at their centres, and I work with my small group at my table. When I'm done with them (about 10 minutes) I ding my bell. This means clean up and come back to the carpet. Once they're all back at the carpet, we look around to check that the room is cleaned up properly. Any groups who wrote on whiteboards are able to read a sentence they wrote to the class. This is our sharing centre. Then I move the centre cards on the whiteboard down one spot, and tell each group where they are going for their next centre. Here are some of the centres I do: 1. Bang game: Put all the vocab you’re practicing in a container. Students pull out a card. If they can say it in French (or use it in a sentence, to make it harder) then they can keep the card. If they pull a card that says “bang” then they get another turn (or lose all their cards, your choice!) You can use any empty yogurt container or plastic tupperware. Just make sure they can't see through the container! Some of my students like to play bang and then write the words they won on a whiteboard! 2. Bug in a rug: Lay out the vocab in a grid. One student hides the “bug” under a card, while the other students close their eyes. They guess in French which vocab card it’s hidden under. Whoever finds the bug gets to hide it next. This game requires an honest conversation with your students about why cheating will ruin the fun of the game! 3. Go fish: You can print any of the flashcards you're using in class. Copy them 2 or 4 per page to make them smaller. 4. Word building: Magnets on cookie trays! My students use our visual dictionaries or word wall strips to choose their words/sentences to build. These awesome magnets come from wintergreen. This set is much cheaper, but you'd likely need multiple sets. The cookie trays are from the dollar store. Ideally you want small magnets so they can fit more words on the cookie tray. 5. Sentence building: Print squares with a variety of sentence starters, numbers, colours, and objects. Students then put the words in order to build sentences. You can extend this by having them read their sentences to a partner, or write their sentences on a whiteboard/in their journals. 6. "Pictionary": One student draws on a whiteboard, the other student has to guess what they are drawing. 7. Matching: Picture to the word. My students use our visual dictionaries to check their work over when they're done! 8. Cootie catchers/fortune tellers with a partner. 9. Bingo - 1 group member can be the bingo caller, others put tokens on the words that are called. I use these as the bingo tokens. 10. Writing on whiteboards - 11. Hunting for sight words - 12. Cube game - Roll the cube and answer the question. Extension - write the question! I bought the cubes here, and write different prompts on sticky notes to slide under the plastic. 13. SMACK game - One student says the word, whoever smacks it first gets to say the next word! 14. Spin and graph sight words - 15. Stamp the sight words, themed vocab, or sentences! 16. Write the sight words - I bought salt from the dollar store and added a few drops of food colouring, then gave it a good shake. Students use a sharp pencil to write words in the salt! 17. Read and clip - 18. Spinner games - I use these in centres to give my students prompts for oral communication or writing. They can spin the spinner and either say a sentence or write a sentence. They can review vocabulary in partners (one spins, one says the word). 19. Working with Mlle - The BEST part about centres is that it means I can pull small groups to work with. Do you have any centres you love? Feel free to share in the comments :)
Check out these helpful Spanish alphabet activities to your Spanish students master all 27 Spanish letters and sounds.
After spending three years in Seoul, South Korea, with my family, I knew that I wanted to teach English Language Learners. (ELL) What I loved the most was teaching English to Korean children. At first I had no idea how to start but I had been an elementary teacher and special ed teacher for many years, so I started with lots of pictures of nouns and verbs and wrote my own curriculum. When I returned to the US I started teaching adults while taking many ESL classes until I finally got the job I had waited for: An ESL Resource Teacher/Specialist with the Anchorage School District. Believe it or not there were over 100 different languages spoken by students in the district so it was a true ESL program. I worked in the lowest performing elementary school in the district in the mornings and traveled to 5 other schools in the afternoons. I trained tutors and staff across the district and the state. I became a Trainer of Trainers for S.I.O.P. (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) a method for teaching ESL students. After retiring, I became an Education Consultant for a Korean Company developing their on-line English Speaking, Reading, and Writing Courses for Elementary and Middle School students. After four years I retired. I decided it was time to give TpT and blogging a try. At that time there didn't seem to be much of a market for ESL materials and honestly I knew nothing about marketing or blogging. But now I realize there is a need to know more about teaching ESL students and resources for them. What I do know for sure is that there is probably a 99% chance that those of you reading this have at least one ESL (or ELL) student in your classroom. With high stakes testing, those new to the country or English language programs are only given a 1 year grace period before those students are required to take part in those tests. I truly understand how frustrating that is for those of you who work at schools with a high number of ESL students or a sub group of enough ESL students to count towards your schools' annual yearly progress. What the research shows is that the quality of instruction is a vital factor in ESL students learning English. Well organized classrooms with ample opportunities to interact in English and practice English with both the teacher and classmates is essential. Some of you have an an ESL resource teacher in your school where your students get pulled out for an hour or more each day for intensive instruction. He or she will be a great resource for you. For others you may be looking for some materials to help your ESL students. There are some wonderful materials available that are not too expensive that your principal may be willing to purchase which I'd like to share with you. Picture Dictionaries: There are several to choose from depending on the ages of your students. If your students are literate in their first language then you may want to look at the ones that are in both English and the student's first language. I used Word by Word Basic for my learning center. It is a smaller version of their Word by Word dictionary which I used for adults. There are many options for English and other languages. Just click on the picture to find out more about it. My favorite for my primary students was the Oxford Picture Dictionary for Kids. Not only is there a dictionary but there are reproducible books that have Picture/Word Cards, Worksheets, Stories and more. There are 9 themes with several lessons for each theme. My students loved this series. You can access all the components by clicking on the image below. For the Intermediate grades I used the Oxford Picture Dictionary for Kids in the Content Area and reproducible books. There are Math, Science, and Social Studies units and more. Just click on the image below to learn more about these. If you are only interested in the dictionary you can click HERE. Another great resource is Rosetta Stone. Students can work at the computer during the day individually . You can learn more about it by clicking on the image below. With the ESL population growing all over the US, I decided to start creating ESL materials not only for the classroom teacher for for ESL teachers, too. I completely revised my first ESL Beginning Speaking Unit when teachers started purchasing it and started asking me if there were more lessons like that one. It actually was one of a group of 20 ESL Beginning Speaking Lessons that I just didn't get around to revising and remaking. The first was called "My Day: In the Morning". Then I created and bundled the 3 lessons: "My Day" which you can access my clicking on the image below: I incorporated the sheltered instruction strategies of a Activating Prior Knowledge (what do they already know), Building Background (pictures for new vocabulary), Guided Practice (speaking activities) and Independent Practice. Here is a sample of all the activities of "In the Morning" You can click on the image above to read all about the lessons and download the Preview file to see all the materials and activities in the Unit. Through FB I met a teacher who was beginning her journey as an ESL Resource Teacher after 20 years of teaching. Her job is so similar to the one I had in Alaska. We became instant friends and she inspired to create more lessons. Here is my new "At School" unit, which contains 4 Beginning Speaking Lessons. Each of these Unit Lessons have a Lesson plan for teaching each of the sheltered instruction strategies. You can read the description and download the preview file by clicking on the image below. I have made my lesson "My Day: In the Morning" free to my followers and viewers who have ESL beginner students in their classrooms or to ESL teachers. I hope that it will get them interacting in their new language in a fun way and on the road to achieving proficiency. I would love for you to come back and comment below to give me some feedback. Just click on the image below to download your free lesson. You may also be interested in my new Pinterest board which you can follow by clicking on the picture below. Click HERE to check out all my new Pinterest boards. Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. I am planning to do more blog posts about working with ESL or ELL students. If you are interested in knowing more, leave a comment below to tell me what topics your would be interested in. Thank you. Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Sonrisas Spanish is a communicative, standards-based curriculum for preschool and elementary school. For 20 years, Sonrisas has been the best elementary Spanish curriculum available, and they continue to add new components and update their materials. The Big Picture Interactive Elementary Spanish Curriculum Sonrisas elementary Spanish curriculum is a communicative approach
Help! My students don’t remember the parts of speech! Yep, we’ve all been there. You start a grammar lesson, only to realize that your students don’t remember the basics. It’s not that they don’t understand grammar and syntax; they just forgot the technical terms (nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections) that they need […]
