 ¡Hola colegas! The final push is here for me before the highly anticipated and dare I say it – needed break from school. I love my student’s, but sometimes distance and time apart makes the heart grow fonder, if you catch my drift. That being said, I know I am not alone in brainstorming and planning for those weird days before break when it feels like over half your students are gone and no new learning can take place either because it doesn’t make sense to do it with half your students gone OR because admin have mandated it so… We’re all working with different time frames and energy stores, so I hope at least one of these might inspire you or that you can Frankenstein some together to make it work for you in this season of teaching. So here is my brainstorming-- 7, easy, low prep ideas you can steal for your plans: 1.Musical Chair Sometimes the magic of the season comes in the form of a magical transformation of your room! I have a desk free classroom and students constantly joke that it’s perfect for playing musical chairs which I actually haven’t done yet with them, so having them come into the room the day before break to see it transformed into their wildest dreams – a circle instead of our traditional rows sounds pretty fun! Here’s a Spotify Playlist of Spanish Holiday Music to make it even more festive. (and if you need a refresher on how to play Musical Chairs here you go!) 2. Picture Talk and Draw That! Mode Project a festive winter picture and introduce students to some basic vocabulary through Picture Talk– Srta Spanish has this great video walking you through how to Picture Talk if you’ve never tried it. Then you can play Draw That! Mode on Gimkit. Draw That! Mode has one student drawing while the rest try to guess the word so even if you don’t have a Gimkit account you could live play in on your white board and have students in teams trying to guess aka pictionary, but the Gimkit mode allows you to use less energy and sit back and relax if that is what you need. Here’s an example of the type of Gimkit Set you'd want. 3. Adivina la canción (Guess the song!) A super fun time filler that I learned from Elizabeth Detlinger is to play Spanish covers of songs and have students guess them. You can have this be in small groups racing other groups for a more competitive spin OR you can just play as a whole class. Here’s a playlist of Spanish Covers of Hits or Spanish Covers of Christmas Songs depending on your school and demographic. I highly recommend you think about representing ALL students as much as you can around the holidays. 4. Craft it up! There are SOO many cute crafts out there from different creators, so you can definitely find something fun and festive to do if your students like being creative. I’ve enjoyed making holiday cards and having students write a message to a teacher on the inside in the past. You can grab the template and instructions HERE. 5. Quién sabe, sabe If you haven’t played the game Quién sabe, sabe (an adaptation of the board game Wits and Wagers) for the world language classroom by Nelly Hughes I cannot recommend a better game and the Comprehensible Classroom has done ALL the heavy lifting and made versions of it on SOOOO many different topics – such as this Christmas themed one. This game is incredible for comprehensible input and learning numbers/number repetitions. I am not going to explain exactly how to play, because Martina has a great blog HERE. I am just simply going to say that if you haven’t played it yet you NEED to and you and your students are going to love it. You can easily fill a whole block playing and their resource has everything you could possibly need to play at any level. 6. Los muñecos de hombre en el jardín (Snowmen in the Garden) This is a super fun brain break/game most commonly called statues in the garden (estatuas en el jardín), but I love to give it a seasonal spin and call it Los muñecos de hombre en el jardín. One student stands in the center of the room and everyone else stands around the outside. I make students touch the wall. The person in the middle is turning around and looking at their peers. If the student in the middle is looking at you then you CANNOT move you are frozen (snowmen). However, when they are not looking you can WALK towards them. If the person in the middle catches a snowman moving I have them point and say ‘fuera’ and that person must return to the wall and touch it again before moving towards the person again. The first person to touch the person in the middle wins and gets to be IT on the next turn. Here’s a blog with an awesome example video from La Maestra Loca to help you conceptualize how to play the game. 7. Color by Word I first heard of this activity from Courtney’s blog (Profe Zulita) and it’s my go-to-emergency sub plan and now I’m thinking it could be a great before or right after break activity. Here is her blog explaining how it works, but I have created some coloring pages that are winter themed HERE if you would like to shake it up and make it more seasonal. I love that no matter which of these activities you choose you’ll be creating a moment to connect and build relationships with your students. And if you need to hear it from someone – it’s OKAY and encouraged to take some of your class time and fill it with the fun stuff that makes your students enjoy school. Whatever you decide to do before break with students I hope you have a restful and relaxing time off from school and come back refreshed in the New Year. ¡Hasta el año nuevo!
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