Inside:  A great idea of a highly communicative game to play with your students as well as free resources to  use.

Today I was scrolling Instagram  as I often do -- and if you aren't following fellow teachers on social media I highly recommend. It's often where I get some of the best ideas for in my own classroom.  Annabelle (La Maestra Loca) posted about how awesome this game was in her classroom a year ago and as soon as I read her Instagram post I KNEW it was exactly the sort of fun my Spanish II and III students needed this Thursday. We have an early out and 20min classes, so I was struggling to come up with ideas of something to do with them.

The premise is exactly like that of  20 questions. There is a person that knows the item or thing and everyone else is trying to figure it out.  The guessers get 20 questions. The only rule for the questions is that they have to YES or NO in nature. This is great question structure practice for students and builds lots of communication confidence in the student that has the item.

Prompt each student to bring something small-- small enough to fit in a plastic Easter egg (which considering we are going on our Spring (aka Easter) break this weekend (just small town Iowa things)is just themed enough to be cute in my opinion, but still focused in on authentic and engaging target language fun.

Draw names or take volunteers -- they put their secret item into the plastic Easter egg (I have one of the jumbo ones just to be safe incase items are a little larger and a normal smaller one. The students that are not in the "hot seat" with their item rotate around asking questions. I  project ideas/sentence frames for my students so they feel confident about asking questions. Students can guess as many times as they want, but  can only ask 20 questions. Once the 20 questions are up the person in the hot seat either reveals their secret item as we were incapable of guessing what it was OR we celebrate as soon as we correctly guess it!

Here is the slides I will be using in my classroom to play this game!

You can get your own editable copy of the slides by clicking  --> here!
(As a reminder I am a brand new teacher and department of two; this is free if there are mistakes please just fix them yourself. Thanks!)

​

Inside: My ideas, plans, and thoughts pertaining to what I do before I start teaching Capibara con botas by Mira Canion

I had big plans to teach this book last Spring in Spanish I, but thanks to COVID-19 I never got around to it, so this year I was even more pumped to finally teach it. I really utilized other blogs about this book when planning to teach this novel, so here are links to various ones that were useful to me in my planning. (Miss Maestra, Mis Clases Locas, and Profesora Canisalez)

Prior to starting  I like to do a lot of  pre-reading  culture and vocabulary  front loading. I feel it makes my students more confident and  makes reading the novel more enjoyable for all of us, so leading up to the novel I did the following:

Front Loading Options:

Gimkit - (FREE) I love using Gimkit, because you can view the data and use it to help you decide what vocabulary your students know/don't know and how to target the areas they are low in before ever starting to read.

Capibara  Stations  ($3 TPT)  - The fact that this is digital and distance learning friendly was sooo nice. I put it on Google Classroom and students worked individually and we discussed after as a class.

Ecuador Cultural Reading  ($3 TPT)  - Great as intro to the culture and geography in the book; good reading practice

Where are the rainforests-presentation  (FREE)
Where are the rainforests- Student map to fill in during  (FREE)

Rainforest animal- presentation  (FREE)
Rainforest animal - Student reading and drawing handout  (FREE)

Capibara Class  Story  (FREE)
(did this volleyball reading in pairs and then as a class did reader's theater)
Follow up activity for this story  (FREE)

La Selva Tropical Reading  (FREE)
(great for extension or fast finishers also use this with the Toma  Uno activity)

Capibara Craft-Activity (FREE)
Example slides for students to reference
Writing template for students

Capibara y Selva Tropical Toma Uno  ($1 TPT)

Various videos you can show in class if there is time:

Geography Now: Ecuador
Gari the capybara
Capibaras : World's Largest Rodent

My order of events:

Day One:  Do the Ecuador Cultural Reading (discuss as class) and Capibara Stations to check and go over the next day

Day Two: Discuss stations as class, do Capibara class story and reader's theater. You can also give them the  follow up activity where students draw as they reread the class story.

Day Three: Rainforest and animals presentations and handouts.

Day Four: Craftivity of making capibaras and writing backstories 

Day Five: Toma Una Capibara and Selva Reading activity 

I have an upcoming blog about activities and games and resources I used in the first half of this novel coming soon! Stay tuned!

Inside: An honest review about the Spanish reader - El gorila blanco de Guinea   Española

Today's book review is about the book El gorila  blanco de Guinea Española by Craig Klein Dexemple.

This is not just any book, but a graphic novel which are always SUPER popular with my students. I have no doubt that I will see this one coming off my shelf a lot in these next weeks during our free voluntary reading time.

First off, I  am OBSESSED with the fact that this book focuses in on Guinea Española and Àfrica. I don't have other books that feature this country or Africa in general so it's nice to see countries other than Spain and Mexico  represented in my books. (I have lots of other countries than just Spain and Mexico, but sometimes it feels like a lot of content focuses in on those two countries.)

This book follows the harrowing  journey of Copito the albino gorilla who was discovered in Guinea Española and trafficked all the way to Barcelona through the loss of his gorila family, living in an apartment with his adopted family, his time in a Spanish zoo, his love life, and his impactful legacy.

It's full of amazing themes such as  conservation,  colonialism, exploration, persecution of the outcast, the struggle of looking or being different, as well as the creation of family.

It also includes lots of funny moments such as farts, slipping on banana peels, etc. which  will get LOTS of giggles I am sure.

It incorporates lots of great vocabulary such as travel vocab, animal vocab, and  food vocab if you're looking for thematic reinforcement.

This graphic novels illustrations are so well done and while they are black and white they are super detailed and vibrant. They truly help the reader comprehend what is being said throughout the graphic novel. It's full of super fun sayings and expressions that you'll be hearing from students as well.

The novel itself is written in the present tense with a little bit of simple past thrown in. It's ideal for Novice level readers, but an easy and enjoyable read for even those that are fluent.

The day I put this out on my shelf for free reading  I had a student (who is lower) come up to me asking "Do you know the only Spanish speaking country in Africa?", so that alone is a huge win for me. It really is a fun book and very much at lower, novice students level to interact with.
If I were to use this as a class novel (which I think could be really cool in the future) I would recommended it for  Spanish I or middle school exploratory or even all the way up to the beginning of Spanish II if you dive more into the deep topics and not just the story.

Here is a  great  resources (and it's digital as well) by Profe Nygaard that I would consider pairing with this novel if I were to use it as a  class novel:

Guinea Ecuatorial - Culture - video embedded notes (en español)
You can purchase this novel at Spanishcuentos.com   ($7.95)    or on Amazon  ($9.99)  .

Let me know your thoughts on this novel below!