Starting the Year with Upper Level Students

Beth Hanlon, OFLA Executive Recorder and Editor of The Cardinal
Spanish Teacher, Oberlin High School

I hope your year has started off well!  

I just started year 21, and deciding how to start it was no less stressful than previous years!  I always wonder: should I go over the whole syllabus the first day, or break it up throughout the week? What kind of “get to know you” activities should I do?  I agonize over how to set the right tone for the year during those important first days.

Upper levels, though, do not make me agonize as much because I already know most of the students.  They understand how my class operates and we know each other.  They also have a solid language base that I can tap into more quickly.  I would like to share an activity I created to get them reading, writing, and speaking Spanish during week 1!

This past summer brought a lot of incredibly interesting events, from the Canadian wildfires to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour to Álvaro Soler revealing his secret wedding on Instagram.  As these events unfolded throughout the summer, I began keeping track of them and finding articles about them in Spanish.  After I had collected 8 of them, I was able to create a Spanish 3/4 activity for week 1.

Most of these events did not have to do with Hispanic culture, but that was not my goal.  What I wanted students to be able to do was  start getting their feet wet in Spanish again after summer break. By reading parts of authentic resources, writing a little, and having a class discussion about events they might have had experience with either personally (the Canadian wildfire smoke), heard about through social media (the Titan submersible) or be interested in (Taylor Swift’s tour) we did just that.  

Before I wrap up this article, I will share the resources for this activity with you.  This document contains the lesson plan as well as the student worksheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a7zYNF3_qPmbDjd7tG4lh0PPGcZI7C1Wf2L0S3WNklc/edit 

This document contains the slides I printed of the events for the gallery walk: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Z6IdTirnHBB0o70RYUcydXsw5nXXe0m24NQZBaTWnjg/edit#slide=id.g1e4bda8ec0b_0_12 

My classes enjoyed this activity and it generated a lot of conversation. For example, the Canadian wildfires opened the doors to mention the devastating Maui fires; Taylor Swift’s tour led to discussion of Beyoncé’s tour; we debated what could have made the woman on the American Airlines flight so upset; and the World Cup article appealed to the many soccer players in my classes.  Overall, we got back to speaking Spanish!