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!

--It feels insane to type the title of this blog and  to prepare to post this HUGE announcement. For those that know me this won't come as a huge surprise, but for others it may seem like it came out of nowhere.

I've learned a lot  at my present school: how to teach during a pandemic, how to organize, how to engage kids, how to collaborate, but in the end I knew it wasn't my forever school and here's why...

1) I  am presently living about 2.5 hours from my family and in the long run of future things  (aka hopefully starting a family) I didn't want to be that far away.

2) Going along with that-- my present district is kind of in the middle of nowhere and being that I don't have previously stated family or kids yet--my husband and I wanted to live somewhere with a little more going on. This is more of a plus to leaving and less of the driving reason why, but still part of it all.

3) Mentoring. I haven't gotten a lot of it from my school. It's not innately their fault it's one of the aspects of a small school and it was exasperated by  a pandemic and online teaching-- everyone had a lot on their plates the last two years and  giving me the best mentoring program just wasn't priority number one.

4) Stress. All new teachers are stressed. Your first year is exhausting, but for my not new teachers I want you to imagine your first year and then take your stress you've been experiencing navigating COVID-19 on top of that first year stress. I really, very nearly burned out  and I think in part that's due to being a  department of one who has to figure it all out on their own.

Sooo, hopefully that helps everyone understand the mental space I was in when I started looking for jobs. I love my students, but as a co-worker said to me "There will always be students who need you as much as you need them." . It was really hard to leave my students after working so hard to form bonds and build a sound curriculum and program. (My position has had a lot of turnover-- a new teacher every 3-4 years for the last 15.) I want anyone reading this who is in a similar position to know that sometimes leaving a job even if you love the kids and co-workers is what you need to do for YOU and YOUR career and that's OKAY!

While in teacher prep programs our programs tend to spend a lot of time preparing us to take jobs and get jobs, but they don't prepare us as well for when we  end up having to leave one, so I'll be writing a couple blogs about looking for jobs, interviewing, telling kids goodbye, etc. through the next month or so for anyone else who finds themselves looking for a new job in their first few years of teaching or maybe takes this as  a sign to leave... no judgement here. :)

Now the news you've been waiting for!

I'm super excited to be joining a district about 20min from where my family lives and in the Des Moines area so we can  live that "big city" lifestyle. (Anyone who knows Iowa  knows DSM is  a small city) I'll be joining a present  Spanish teacher who has been a department of one   and I am SUPER excited! I am exctied for so many reasons-- to be working with another Spanish teacher , a native speaker, and someone who loves CI as much as I do. I'll most likely be teaching lower-level (Spanish I-2), but I hope I'll still have lots to share with all of you even through this  process.

Thanks for reading and as always if you have any questions please reach out.

-Sierra

INSIDE: Gift ideas for the Spanish teachers in your life (or yourself!)

Maybe this is just me,  but I have a lot of amazing Spanish teachers in my life and I love gift giving, so I thought I'd give you some of my ideas that I've come up for myself and the teachers in my life!

​1. Selena Quintanilla Vinyl
Cost: $24.99
This is the perfect gift for the Spanish teacher in your life that might also collect vinyls and/or has a record player in their homes. I know I'm excited to jam to these tunes on a super cool, purple vinyl. I asked my  in-laws for this gift and can't wait to listen to it live!

2. Ember Mug
Cost:  $99.95
This is a super fun techy gift for your warm beverage loving teacher friends. This mug connects to an app and you control the EXACT temp of your mug so that your coffee or tea never gets too cold or hot. As someone that is  constantly heating up my coffee I love the idea of NEVER having to it again.

3.  Fountains of Silence
Cost: $12

This was one of my favorite reads of 2020. This book takes place during the Spanish  Civil War in Madrid, Spain. It's got everything-- mystery, suspense, romance, historical fiction, etc. So if you have a friend that loves to read this would be a great book. It's even available IN Spanish! I know I love getting books in Spanish so I can practice by reading in my free time.

4 .   Handmade   Cute Masks
Cost: $15-$20

I love these masks and so will the Spanish teacher in your life. They fit great and have super cute designs AND you're supporting a fellow Spanish teacher and small business. Let's be safe and stylish!

5.  Trendy Graphic Tees
Cost: approx. $25

These tees are soooo cute and comfortable and AGAIN  you get to support another teacher along the way. There are lots of cute tees with lots of different  sayings and you truly can't go wrong with.

6.  Cookbooks!  (Spain) (Tex-Mex)

I lived in Spain, so for me the traditional Spanish food cookbook is something I love because it's full of recipes my host mom and friends made for me regularly. I've also linked a modern tex-mex cookbook with lots of popular favorites, but really you could do a cookbook from any country and for your amateur chef friends it would be PERFECT!

7.  Curated Goodie Bags
 Cost:  $25-$75

These are so cute and perfect for present giving at a distance. The  bags come filled with lots of fun Latinx goodies and always, always super cute wrapping/packaging. I love my stickers and jewelry and other fun things I've gotten in other goodie bags in the past!

8. Hola Bonita Mug
Cost: $6

If I had a dollar for every time I see this mug on #TeacherInstagram I would  be able to at least buy this mug, but you can't blame people. It's SUPER cute and I love the little parrot inside of the mug. It makes me smile every time I use it.

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9.  Candy Boxes

There are lots of site that will do different kinds of curated candy boxes and this one is a Spicy  Mexican Candy box. It's full of lots of fun different types of candy and would be super fun to try or enjoy again with friends and family during the holidays.

10. Your Love and Support

It's hard to be a Spanish teacher this year. It's hard to be a teacher this year. Just continue to be  a support system to the teachers in your life and it you're wanting to take a step further consider giving money or TPT giftcards to your friends, becuase we all need the grace and understanding that our time is valuable. Take care of yourselves friends and have a great gift giving season.

Inside: Learn about a fun and very low-prep activity you can easily due with any unit and any level of Spanish class

The idea for collaborative crosswords came to me after we  did a Toma Uno activity in class and my students told me how much they enjoyed working in teams against each  other. My students are super competitive which I am sure man y of you can relate to.

All you need to do this activity is a crossword, wether that is one you make specifically for a unit to do this activity or one you already have and want to try doing something a little more collaborative/game like, is totally up to you. I personally love doing this activity when I am doing a Sr. Wooly   unit in my classes. I like to do it then because every song comes with a supplementary resources packet and within those packers there is ALWAYS a pre-made crossword with great questions to  help students work on their  target structures.

Now that you have a crossword here is how you set up:

Take the cross word and cut the boxes/puzzle part off from the hints. Each team will need  one paper with the boxes. I like to do this in teams of no more than 3. I think it allows  all the students  to have an equal  and equitable amount of time to work with the structures and collaborate truly.

I usually add a V for  vertical and H for horizontal next to the number on each of the hints since they won't be labeled anymore.

Put all the hints at the front of your room in one location. Each team picks a runner . The runner should rotate every  time they need a new hint to work on their crossword. 

The competition lies in the fact that since each team has one of the hints you never know if the last hint you need is  being used by another team. The teams race to correctly finish their crossword!

Can't wait to hear about how this works in your own classrooms! Happy teaching :)

​-Profe Sierra

Updated: This now includes how I have taken this well loved, by my students, in person game and made it work digitally for me now during COVID-19 as  I am teaching in person and online at a distance at the same time. 


The marker game  was first introduced to me when I was student teaching with Allison (aka Mis Clases Locas) you can read her blog all about it here.

It's pretty straight forward. You can play basically whenever as long as there is a topic your students are pretty knowledgeable on. I use it after a few chapters in a novel, the end of a novel, or to review information from after  special person interviews. To make it extra low-prep the day before assign your students to write 5-10 T/F statements over the topic and turn them in and you won't have to make your own list you  can use theirs that they came up with. Make sure you have them mark their statements as C o F  so you aren't left guessing.

There are two ways I play either as a class, but divided into two teams.

Here are the rules for the class divided in two:

In this version each person needs their own marker. And I play with markers, because like most classrooms I have a plethora of them-- but any object where every person could have their own of them would work.

True statement: students race to grab the marker & hold up.  

• The team with the most members holding the marker receives 1 point

False statement: students do NOT touch/pick up marker.

• If nobody on team touches/picks up marker, the team earns 1 point (Both teams have the possibility of earning a point.)
• If both teams hold up marker, team with the most loses 1 point
• If student touches marker & throws back, person sitting opposite stands up silently. Team with student that threw marker loses 2 points!

OR I play  where students are partners.  In this version set of two people need their own marker (or object).

Here are the rules for partner play:

True statement: students race to grab the singular marker & hold up.  

• The  person that grabs the  marker first receives 1 point.

False statement: students do NOT  want to touch/pick up marker.

• If neither person picks up the marker, they each earn 1 point (Both people have the possibility of earning a point.)
• If one person tries to grab the marker that person looses a point  and other person neither looses or gains a point.
• If student touches marker & throws back, the student that threw marker loses 2 points for throwing!

Here's how I adapted this game for online/digital learning:

I made  a Google Slide template where I replaced the marker that we would play with in person to a clipart of maracas. Thus , I started calling it Maracas instead of the marker game.

The same rules apply for points as the in person version, but in this one students play from their own computers wether that be at home digitally over Google Meet or Zoom or in person but 6ft away from each other.

The Google Slide is shared (with editing abilities allowed to all students in the class) and in editing mode you assign each pair of students to their own slide and  they can play against each other there by dragging the clipart (this only works when it is in edit mode) and racing to see who gets it on their side first.

If you want to save some time you can use my template by purchasing it --> here.

My students really enjoyed this fun  game during all of this.

Overall, the marker game or maracas whichever version you play it's bound to be a hit with your students and we LOVE low-prep activities! Can't wait to hear how it goes in your class.

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Teaching with comprehensible novels is one of my favorite things to do in my classroom. I anchor my classes and content around several different novels, so last year I spent quite a bit of time compiling different  activities that could be adapted novel to novel. I'll be updating this to include more over time.

Causa y  Efecto (You can find my template here): I am all about interdisciplinary activities so when my Spanish 1 kids were talking about learning about cause and effect in English I figured now was the time to do the same in Spanish. It's a relatively easy concept, but is great for triggering deeper and more meaningful analysis of the text. I use a simple template that helps students guide their thinking and then either ask students to work independently or through guided discussion. It's a great way to target specific vocabulary by  filling out the  form with your students or to check for comprehension. 

I have made a template in both English and Spanish (but you can feel free to do it yourself or have students just do this on scrap paper) so that I  can do this across all levels of Spanish that I teach  (Spanish 1-4 and 6th grade). My template prints two to a page  to save on paper/printing and I keep some available to me in my classroom at all times.

I  have done this a couple of ways. My go to with class novels is to have a discussion at the beginning of class, work with vocabulary a little, have students read for that day, and then some form of activity. This form was an easy option for students to choose as their activity for the day. That being said here are some other variations.

1) I have students fill one out after each chapter. They stable them together as they go until at the end they have created  a booklet of all the different major moments from the novel we are reading.

2) I've also done it so that students fill out their template after a   specific moment in the class and I have them do a  2-3-4. Where the group they discuss with slowly grows and they share what they wrote down.

3)You can also use this as a  comprehension check/formative assessment. I like to have students fill in the front and on the back of the paper depending on their level analyze a little more.

Hope this helps you and you're able to  use it with your own students!

What a weird way to end the school year! I  know I am not alone in feeling bummed out about how it ended. I  had all these big plans of what I was going to gift my Seniors on our last day of Spanish class.  

I got SO very lucky this year with my Spanish IV students. They welcomed me with open arms and were so willing to try anything with their new, crazy teacher. I still have so much to learn and there were mess ups and mistakes along the way and they rolled with all the punches. Oh and there were also ONLY 5 of them. I should preface by saying its a VERY small school and from what I learned this year a mass exodus from the Spanish program, because "the new Spanish teacher is hard"-- that's what my lovely students from student teaching told my new students. Ironically my Spanish I and II classes are larger than they have been in a decade next year... so.

Either way all these things helped me in my brainstorming. My students love music. The Mania Musical brackets from Mis Clases Locas as well as her Para Empezar (which includes Música Miércoles {Check out her free week here}) were big parts of our classroom culture. So I decided to throw it back a little to the age of MixTapes and make my students there very own modern, Spanish version.

I created a playlist of their favorite songs from this year. It's a little comical to me, because it's so random, but it's basically the winners from our brackets during Hispanic Heritage Month  and Mania Musical de Marzo as well as songs I played often in the classroom or ones the requested after hearing them during Música Miércoles. My students also really don't understand the lyrics and are all  18 , so  use it at your own discretion. If I taught heritage speakers or middle school it might look different.

Here's the playlist I gave to my students:   THS clase de español de 2020

As well as some other playlists I use often and you could easily pull songs from:

Latin X Indie (Chill and great for background music in classroom)
Spanish Coffee Shop Playlist ( I use this when we do my Starbucks Mode, also chill)
Disney en español  ( everyone knows these songs :) )
Latin Hits  (I listen to this playlist to stay up-to-date on the Hits and get ideas for new songs in class)

However, I  am of the mindset that this gift is only as good as the time and thoughtfulness you put into it. Pick songs YOUR students will know and like. 

Now as far as how I went about make this paper, digital,  not an actual "MixTape" playlist.

I created a  cute template that you can either mail or email to your students. Save yourself some time and use one of the 5 templates I've already created. Comes with all the instructions as well! You can grab it  here.

I  took the playlist I created on Spotify and put it into a QR Code generator.   All this detailed instructions on formating and creating this are in my resource on TPT.

And then I wrote individual messages to each of my students. Mailed them with the  smaller print option of my template  of the playlist and I was done. ( The stationary I use is the American Greetings brand from Amazon. You can grab them at this link.) However, if you have more than 5 students and don't want to hand write and cut out for each student I included a larger version in my resource that can easily be edited and downloaded in PDF or PNG form and emailed to your students!
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I didn't take me very long and I know that at the very least it will make my students smile.

​-Sierra

II rebranded and here's the long story of why...

I have several reasons for going from Srta Depping on all platforms to Profe Sierra, but the biggest reason is due to a little bit of my own stupidity/forgetfulness.

I started my blog srtadepping.com a  little over a year ago using Blogger.  When I started that blog I was still student teaching with Allison (Mis Clases Locas). I had started a student teacher Instagram so that  I could follow these great creators I was learning about and I am so glad I did. There is so much to be learned every day and I am so grateful for the brilliant minds that put ideas and resources out there, because they saved my butt during my first year of teaching. I also didn't want my personal Instagram tagged and followed by lots of strangers. (Also, pretty sure my high school friends and family do not need to read all about the cool things I made for my classroom or how I am differentiating every day.) However, that means I picked the easiest name I could-- Srta Depping. That's what my students called me. It was my name more-or-less and as a soon-to-be new teacher I had been working hard for several years now to earn that title. Well then I went and got engaged this Fall to my boyfriend of three years and will be getting married this August 2020 (as long  as COVID-19 doesn't wreck it). So Depping, while it is my last name and a part of me, will no longer be my last name in just a couple months.

I had really considered keeping everything Srta Depping for ease. No one really needs to know my "real" last name for the sake of things social media. Having my Instagram Srta Depping only made it easy for 4 stalkery high schoolers to find my account this year, but that also wasn't that big of a deal for me. I blocked them and told them they could follow my social media after they graduated and in all honesty in a few years my students would have completely forgotten that they used to call me  Depping, so that would have no longer been an issue as well.

No, the real reason I had to change everything is because when  I set up my  original blog I used my university email. Dun dun dun...  and eventuall y because I was no longer a student there they deleted said email and I completely forgot that I had linked it to  a soon-to-be invalid email address. The several weeks of work  I did moving things from that email and Google Drive to my permanent  email  had not jogged my memory and when I realized... well it was too late.

I plan on using this summer to re-upload some of my older blogs that people often referenced and I promise that this blog is no longer linked to a potentially expiring email address. Thanks for you patience and I look forward to growing this new blog under a new name.

Oh yeah! The new name. I had a lot of people asking and honestly quite confused why I chose Sierra. I think a lot of people think I am referencing  mountains or trying to be clever, but it's really not that deep.

1) It's not my going to be my married last name. I am aware that Sierra is a common-ish last name especially in Spain, because when I lived there it was very confusing to my host family and I was consistently asked why my parents chose it. I even once had a stranger in Spain equate it to the then popular baby name "Nube" or "Cloud" in English.

2) I didn't think it was THAT uncommon of a name and didn't even think about how some people would think it's weird.

Sierra is just my first name and I am in fact named after the Sierra Madres in Mexico.  Believe me I think a few people were a little embarrassed when they DMed me on my Instagram that they thought using Sierra sounded weird or  was an odd choice for my account.

Either way Profe Sierra is here and   is definitely here to stay!

​-Sierra
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