Señora Chase

What’s new in Spanish 2:

I hope your year is off to a great start! We are getting ready to start our 8th week already and I’m getting reacquainted with Spanish 2. I haven’t taught this level for years, long before I started this little Blogcito, so if you’re a long time reader, you might have noticed I talk a lot about levels 1, 4 and AP but nada about level 2! I’m excited to rediscover the joy of teaching level 2 and to share how I’m loading up those Second Year Little Darlings with lots of Comprehensible Input.

Like many of you, my Spanish 2s come from different level 1 classes, all with unique experiences. Some come with loads of robust exposure to CI last year, confidence to express themselves (imperfectly, of course, but they’re not afraid to try) and excited to dive in and acquire more. I’m super fortunate to teach again many of the Little Darlings I loved last year❤️️. Unfortunately about half of my new Darlings had a different Spanish 1 encounter and they are getting used to hearing lots of Spanish and learning how things go down in a CI classroom. It has been tricky balancing the input needs of both groups….some need to get to know our Super Seven Verbs while others are ready for fly. Here’s what has helped and I’m happy to report that we’ve hit our stride and our newbies are mostly acclimated 🙂

  • Free Reading: You know my favorite thing of all is free reading, where each student picks a book that’s a good level and interesting to them, and they read silently and independently each class. (I’ve written a lot about our free reading routine, so if you’d like to jump down the reading rabbit hole, here are some posts for you: 6 elements to incorporate into your Free Reading program, Sample Time, a Free Reading Strategy and Señora Chase’s Library by Level) The best thing about free reading is that you can meet everyone’s needs at once. (Not something you can often say in education, amiright?!) My newbies can start with super easy books to get their toes wet and build confidence. Adam Giedd’s Confident Pigeon Readers are very popular and they are loving the comprehensible language and fantastic illustrations! My high flyers just jumped in where they left off last year and are adding lots of new language into their absorbent little brains. While they’re reading, I’m modeling reading something that’s a good level for me too, JapanEasyReads, comprehensible readers in Japanese. Win-win-win!
  • Pura Vida Movie Talk: We started the year with a Movie Talk (also called Clip Chat) of Don Omar’s Pura Vida music video. It was a great way to give lots of repetitions of high frequency verbs like ve, baila, juega, le dice, puede but also introduce a few verbs to keep my high flyers engaged like trata de, se pone desilusionado, mejora, les enseña. I created a LOT of material for this movie talk, so I packaged it up real nice and pretty in a 10 day unit plan. It’s designed for early in the year for Spanish 2 but would be great for late in the year in Spanish 1 as well. Not only does it include loads of input games (you know me!), a handful of readings, full movie talk script with screenshots, a gentle introduction into the past tense and a menu of assessment options, IT’S ON SALE NOW! For the next 3 days, get 20% off here!
  • Juventud: We’ve wrapped up Pura Vida and we’re digging into probably my favorite unit to teach ever: all about their childhood! It is so much fun to reminisce together about their favorite movies and toys, picture talk pictures of them when they were tiny and bond over shared childhood fears, while they naturally get a sense of the past tense. They informed me that “Bubble Guppies” was their favorite TV show (they were shocked I had never heard of it🤣) so we did a quick Bubble Guppies Movie Talk the following class and it was just delightful. My plan is to have the Juventud unit available after we finish it, so stay tuned! (If you want a notification when it arrives, you can follow my TPT store)

Additionally, I’ve been cooking up some summer plans that I’m excited to share:

Wishing you a smooth start of the year, cooperative Little Darlings and lots fun loading them up with comprehensible language!

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