Get outside! Chalk drawings!
Close to the end of the year, I like to find new things to do to keep things interesting and fresh for the kids, and for myself. We are all so burnt out, if I can find new activities or games to keep their interest and engagement high and keep me from pulling every hair on my head out (OH THOSE 8th graders right now….) we are all winning!
I recently told Blair Richards about an activity I was doing to review song lyrics we have heard throughout the year. I normally have kids illustrate song lyrics around the room and then we remove the lyrics and try and identify the song, AND the lyric from the song, just by looking at the drawing. She gave me the GENIUS idea of taking this OUTSIDE with chalk!!! YAAASSS!!!
I wrote some of my favorite lyrics down on individual strips of paper and then I spread the kids out on the side walk in pairs. Each pair received a song lyric and then set to illustrating that lyric (with no words). After a few minutes, I called everyone together and we started at one end of the sidewalk and worked our way up, reviewing each drawing as we went. It was so much fun, so engaging and SO easy to stay in Spanish. They also loved being outside! Here is a video of when I did it with 7th grade.
The songs I used were, our previous songs of the month, like “Soy Yo“, “Latinoamérica“, and “La Bicicleta” and all of the Señor Wooly songs I had previously taught them.
If you don’t have chalk, before you go out and spend your money, ask the art teacher in your school. That is where I borrowed mine from and it turned out she had tons of extra, so she just gave me the box! 🙂
I also recommend reminding your students they should ONLY be drawing things related to the song and lyric you gave them…. 😉 just to be safe… I was so proud of my kids too, they all stayed in Spanish the whole time. Without me asking! They just know it is my expectation during class that they communicate and speak only in Spanish and CIRCUMLOCUTE everything to communicate! So proud!!!!
Until next time,
Happy Teaching! Hang in there! It is May!
YAY!
Love,
La Maestra Loca
(This was me on Elizabethan Day this week…)
Hi Anna
I was there last week in Oregon… I learned so much! Thank you! I love this idea of illustrating song lyrics! And I really like both songs, Soy yo and Latinoamérica… never hear them.
I remember you said you do a song of the month. What do you do with the song of the month?
I love them too! I use Señor Wooly songs separately. Even though they are illustrating Wooly lyrics I have never used a Wooly song as a song of the month. Normally I start by introducing the singer/song writer. I talk about where they are from and their families…. It is GREAT for input. After that, we jump into the song. I preview some of the vocabulary by sneaking it into whatever non-targeted input we are doing the week before. I will write a detailed blog on my “song of the month” soon but that is the general idea. We do lots of dancing to the song, cloze activities, Word cloud activities, running dictations and sequencing. I have one mini-unit on La Bicicleta by Carlos Vives and Shakira for sale on TPT. Check it out if you’re interested. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/La-Bicicleta-Carlos-Vives-y-Shakira-3116811 I had so much fun in Oregon! I hope this helps! 🙂