Easter Themed LESSON PLAN! YAAAAY!

Y’all I had the BEST day ever. I am going to tell you all about it, both successes and failures (or rather things that when I do this next year I will FOR SURE do differently…. as I write these reflections I will color the “oops” moments in RED)…

Last night I prepped these questions. I prepped a set for my two more advanced classes and a set for my lower classes . I really have 6 different preps but on BIG days like this I can kind of get away with 2 preps with “personalization” mixed in to seperate out the 4 lower levels. If you click on those question paper links you’ll be forced to “make a copy” that way you can edit/change as you see fit! For my lower classes I had 5 questions that I switched out in between classes to personalize them for the students in that class based on the PQA we’ve done throughout the year.

• This is where my first OOPS! came into play. This would have been fine if I had any sort of prep in between classes. However, by the time the bell rings and everyone clears out of my classroom, I found I was sprinting out to the front yard (trying to make my way through herds of children) and refilling the 5 eggs with only 4 TOTAL minutes of passing period… so when I came back into the building I was LUCKY if I entered as the bell was ringing. Next time, I will have LESS “eggs” to switch out… It makes it a little less personalized but they will still LOVE it.

I went to the dollar store and bought a pack of 20 eggs for a dollar. I bought the ones that are cheap plastic with hinges which worked perfectly. I bought TWO packs actually (and I am SO glad I did) Then, I hid one of the sentences in EACH egg. Next, I hid the eggs (14) all over the Van Slate Yard of our school. The Van Slate Yard is a HUGE area where students play for recess once a day.

• Worked so well at first. First three classes went off without a hitch. Amazing. Students were stoked! Everyone happy! Then LUNCH happened. 5th and 6th graders were outside ON THE VAN SLATE YARD! I had completely forgotten to communicate to them OR the teachers on duty to tell them my carefully placed eggs were there for CLASS! The kids stole them, re-hid them in CRAZY places, and even stomped on some and tore up the papers inside… To say I was frustrated and hurt would be an understatement. Luckily, my principal came through and helped me restuff 14 new eggs, I ran around the last 5 minutes of lunch (a hot pocket in hand) re-hiding new eggs and taking the few that remained back to the class with me.

After hiding all of the eggs, I printed off enough of these for all of my students (click here). I made sure to write the numbers on the eggs for you so you don’t have to do it over again! When you print these, print WITHOUT color (in black and white), it makes the numbers a nice light grey that is EASILY covered when they color!  Each student needs ONE coloring sheet but I liked to give them a variety of choices.

• The super flowery busy egg is missing #8. When they noticed this I just told them it was all the leaves…. They were fine with it. But YOU can make sure and add that when printing

Pass out the papers as students come IN to the room. Have them silently look at them. After they have all taken a second to look at them, they’ll realize it looks like a color by number. Have them put the papers under their seat.

• At first, I did this WITHOUT passing them out as they came in, and when I explained the instructions (I did it in the TL for EVERY class because I had the materials to model it clearly at the front of the room) they couldn’t SEE the numbers on the papers when I was explaining so they were confused. It worked much better when they had all SEEN the paper up close.

Next explain the process. You may choose to run yours differently but this is how I did it:

• Hold up the coloring sheet and get SUPER excited and explain that it is no ordinary coloring sheet.
• Next dramatically take an egg out from a “hiding place” in the class (a model one that you had EXTRA with a folded up piece of paper inside)
• Open it and pretend to read off of it… Make up an EASY question that is not outside or really hidden… For example.. “What color is Samantha’s  (any student’s) shirt”
  • Students will scan the room and yell out the  color of that student’s shirt. “”PINK!””
    • Praise and get excited
• Next, point to an imaginary (or real if you prepped it…. I didn’t prep it in some classes and in others I had eggs from my advanced classes I could use… Either way it works) and say “OH! this is number 10!)
• Then MODEL MODEL MODEL, re-stuffing the egg, and RE-HIDING THE EGG, EXACTLY WHERE IT WAS BEFORE!
  • WHILE YOU ARE DOING THIS: you must be chanting outloud, the number that you saw on the paper, as well as the color of Samantha’s shirt. “10, pink, 10, pink 10 pink!”
• Next model that the students will RUN to their clipboard with their coloring sheet on it. (still chanting “10 pink 10 pink 10 pink”)
  • I chose to keep their clipboards on the porch of the headmaster’s house at the front of the yard. Close by me. I didn’t want them running around with clipboards and pencils (NOT SAFE!) Especially when it wasn’t like they could carry all the colors with them anyways. So their clipboards were kept close to the markers and colors on the porch.
  • I model and say run because I hope they’re enthusiastic and eager when we are outside! I like that we can RUN! None of our students get enough recess! 🙂 This is a perfect opportunity to get them out! Obviously, not ALL of my students ran when we were out there…
    • if you CAN’T play outside you obviously want to model walking!

• Double Triple QUADRUPLE explain that students may NOT bring their egg back with them to their paper, and also model that they can’t go around looking for 10 eggs first. They must return to their paper after each egg they find, AFTER carefully restuffing and rehiding it.
• For my bigger classes I told them that there may be 2 kids to an egg. For ONE of my classes (with my youngest learners) I told them they HAD to pair up to go search for and read eggs. I have some students who are VERY new to Spanish,  along with kids who’ve had Spanish in a CI classroom for three years now in the same period! I need them supporting each other.
• I chose to have students clarify and explain the directions back to me in ENGLISH in my lower classes. In my higher classes, they explained them back to me in Spanish
• I asked my higher classes to bring their iPads with them
  • I had questions that they needed a device for. GREAT IDEA! But there was no wifi outside. ZIP! :((( merrr….. I had even created bit.ly links to maps for them which was AWESOME… Hopefully some of you can use them since I couldn’t 
• Then we went outside!
• I very dramatically told students to look at the ground as they walked so as not to SPOT any eggs before I did the official countdown!
  • They loved this

Here is a video of me explaining the rules to a class.

Here is a video of me with one of my more advanced classes. (I know I said the word vidrio wrong… I had to go back to class and look it up because I couldn’t remember! Haha!)

One student in 4th period, Timothy, hid a dollar in an egg just to make someone’s day. He didn’t want anyone to know it was him who did it… he just wanted to see their face light up when they found money with their Spanish question.  It was a sweet and precious moment.

Here is a video of the activity with my EXUBERANT class… They always start out excited but then after five minutes they are the class that loves to WHINE and be difficult for any tiny bit of running or walking…. or breathing even…. Sigh…. you can see it is a struggle to keep them in Spanish too… They did it though and I am super proud!

This is a video with my 6th grade excited babies!

If they didn’t finish coloring the egg (only two students all day found all 14 eggs and clues), I let them take it home for extra credit coloring to finish…

Now, I think this is the most important part….

• Does it matter what color they color where?!
  • NO!
    • What matters is that they THINK it matters and that they THINK you know exactly how each egg should look.

What matters is that they are READING in the Target Language, and thinking of the answers in the target language. That is ALL…

My classes are 45 minutes in length and most kiddos found on average between 10-12 eggs. I think 60 minutes would be perfect. If you have access to a gym or a BIG outdoor space, that is ideal…

I hope a few of you can use this!!! If YOUR kiddos type in the bit.ly links to the maps they can still access them. I will leave those links up forever…. If you want to change the questions but still use those links, DO IT!!!

Your babies will light up. The highlight of my day? A student who has had a rough couple of months (not in my class but in general) said, “Hey Maestra, thanks for always taking extra time to think of how to make things extra fun for us… we notice….have a nice day…”  #meltme

Until next time,

HAVE FUN HUNTING, AND TEACHING!

Love,

La Maestra Loca