Have you played board games in your elementary Spanish class yet? I used to think the only way to use board games was to bust out Candyland during our colors unit. Thankfully my awesome colleagues introduced me to the idea of making the board games fit the content in our elementary Spanish curriculum.
Shout out to Sra. Schreiner & Sra. Gloudemans!
Why play board games in Spanish class?
My goal for using board games in class has always been to increase student engagement while giving them a reason to communicate in Spanish. Each turn provides an opportunity for a question/answer mini conversation. Nowadays my goal has shifted slightly to include intentionally teaching & practicing social skills, turn taking, & winning/losing gracefully.
What do you need to play board games?
What’s nice to have?
In order to set kids up for success, I like to provide a student resource page for kids when they’re playing board games in small groups. I either print off a copy for each group or make sure to have key vocabulary on the board while they’re playing. Even younger students are able to use the resource and feel more confident about their answers.
Teaching students how to play
I love to teach new games to students by playing it as a whole group first. We play “clase vs. Sra” starting in kindergarten. Then when they play in small groups they are familiar with the rules and able to play independently.
We occasionally play board games in small groups during the kindergarten year. That said, we play with small groups much more often starting in 1st grade.
Procedures for Play: Stories by Señora Style
Set Up–Whole Group
When I play a board game with the whole group, I put the game board on my google slides. *Since I move the game pieces around, you can’t play while in “present” mode.
I use a digital dice roller and switch back and forth between the tabs. To make it easy on myself, I just link the dice roller to an image of a die on my slide. A colleague (shout out to Srta. Younkle!) has kids roll a big die and that sounds fun as well.
For game pieces, I insert 2 shapes into my slides. Mine is always purple (my favorite color) so I don’t have to think about it.
Playing the game–Whole Group
When I play with the whole group, students always go first. I roll the digital die, move their game piece, and call on volunteers to say the term for the space they landed on. Then we go back and forth taking turns. I always play it up when I’m losing, trying to roll a bigger number. Kids love the competitive nature of the game even though I tell them it’s just the luck of your dice rolls. We also always say “buena jugada” or good game at the end.
I try to add in extra language that’s meaningful while we play. “Me toca a mí” & “les toca a ustedes”are a natural fit. I tend to say “la clase tiene tres” & “Señora tiene dos” after rolling and we always count the spaces out loud in Spanish.
Winning the game
In order to win, Señora’s rules say you have to roll the exact number needed. Looking at the sports board game below, the orange player needs a 1 in order to win. They have to roll a 1 or else they’re stuck until their next turn. This is a fun way to ensure an early lead doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win in the end.
Set Up–Small Group
When playing with small groups, I copy the game boards on card stock or put them in plastic page protectors. I also have a bin with dice & game pieces (we always use ositos). *Foam dice are nice so you don’t hear a million rolling dice for the duration.
Playing the game–Small Group
Rules for the game are the same when playing in small groups. I like to have enough copies of the game board for groups of 2-3 students. That makes sure no one has to wait too long in between turns.
I find about 10 minutes is plenty for small group play. It’s important to make your expectations for Spanish use during the game clear. I always tell students I want to hear Spanish numbers and lots of the content words! Walking around and engaging with the groups helps students use lots of Spanish.
Paper vs. Digital Versions of the Board Game
The lovely virtual teaching of yore initially forced me to come up with a digital version of board games. I still use the digital version from time to time to mix things up from one unit to the next.
Our district uses Seesaw & it works well for board games! I just create an activity, upload the game board, add some game pieces and a digital dice video. I usually include a student resource page as a second slide in the activity. Take a look at this activity to see what I mean.
Make Your Own Board Games
If you don’t love creating resources like I do, please find a ton of board game options in my shop. If there’s a topic you’re needing and you don’t see it, please contact me! I’d love to make it for you.
That said, making your own board game isn’t too tricky. You can find blank game board templates on TPT. Then after you’ve collected images for your content, you just copy and paste them into the blank spaces. Give it a try! I bet your students will enjoy it as much as mine do.
Interested in other game ideas?
Tic Tac Toe is always a fun one!
Baamboozle is a fun online whole group game.
To read more about why I am mindful to include playing in my lessons, this post might interest you.
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Let’s face it, elementary students can be squirmy. Like, roll around on the floor or hang upside down from their chair squirmy. This has only increased in the last few years! Our job as elementary Spanish teachers is to help students capture that awesome energy and focus it on our learning goals. Instead of feeling frustrated when students move at inopportune times, I started planning for movement in my lessons. Looking for all the possible ways to get my students moving for a purpose has helped immensely.
We know that kids need to move. It’s not just a nice thing to include in our teaching, it’s necessary. Moving helps students focus, creates a positive mood, and can ultimately help students learn.
4 Ways to Include Movement in Your Lessons
- Planned brain breaks
- Unplanned brain breaks due to necessity
- Transitional movement
- Lesson activity that has movement
Let’s talk through each place movement can occur in class.
Planned Brain Breaks
Brain breaks. It’s been a buzzword for a while now and that’s a good thing!
My lessons are only 30 minutes but if I know the length of a certain activity will push students’ ability to focus, I’ll plan a brain break either part way through or right at the end of that activity.
If you haven’t seen ¡Vamos, Go Noodle!, they have fun songs and activities that invite students to follow along.
That said, I’m more likely to pull up one of my favorite 1,2,3 Andrés songs and play freeze dance. When I stop the music, kids freeze, I say a word we’ve been working on and we all repeat and/or act it out. Then we’re back to dancing.
Unplanned Brain Breaks
We’ve all been there. You look around the room and for whatever reason, it’s not happening. The kids are acting like bumps on a log or they’re a bit too wound up.
For these unplanned movement breaks, I usually refrain from using video brain breaks. Instead, I opt to do a quick & focused teacher-led movement break.
All students stand and we start by marching in place while we count to 10 in Spanish. Then we do another action and count to 9. We work our way down to one, which is always “give yourself a big hug.” Actions I like to include are stomping, tip toes, jumping, clapping, big claps, tiny claps (just pointer fingers), crocodile arms in various sizes. I also do silly voices along with the sizes (low voice for the big crocodile or the stomping feet and high voice for the baby crocodile and tippy toes).
This kind of movement break doesn’t disrupt the timing of our lesson too much. I find it allows the group to refocus together and get back on track.
Transitional Movement
It might seem like a bit much to actually plan out movement that happens during transitions.
I will admit to being an overplanner, but stay with me on this. I’ve found it so helpful to intentionally think about and plan for how I use the transitional time in my lessons. Students definitely get squirrely if I ask them to sit in one spot for the whole lesson. SO, I try to plan activities that will have them moving from one spot to another.
Perhaps we start as a whole group at the carpet and then I send them off around the room to work on something with a partner. Or they head back to their desk or table spot for an individual task. If they need some extra motivation to get moving, I task them with specific directions.
- Walk on your heels back to your desk
- Bunny hop to the carpet
- Tip toe to line up
- Crab walk to your group spot
The simple act of moving from one place in the room to another can be enough of a movement break to allow students to reset and focus on their next activity.
Lesson Activity that Includes Movement
Perhaps the most obvious place to plan for movement within our lessons is within the instructional activity itself. There are a number of different activities I use throughout the school year that ask students to move for a language purpose (while also achieving the goal of overall movement as well!).
4 Corners
Opinion Corners
Opinion Corners is also an easy one to set up and it’s adaptable to a variety of topics. Students simply move to a sign to demonstrate their opinion of whatever the teacher brings up. Learning sports vocabulary? Show pictures of different sports (one at a time) and students move to a sign (I like it, I don’t like it, etc.). Learning different colors? Food? Activities? Use it over and over again!
Walk to Read
Walk to Read activities are something I came up with because I’m seriously always looking to get my students moving. Do I sound like a broken record yet?
Basically, students have to move to find a clue (hanging on the wall of your classroom or in the hallway). Once they read the clue, they head back to their desk to color something on a poster (they’re using information from the clue here). Then they’re up looking for the next clue!
Freeze Dance
I love to plan a Freeze Dance session when we’re just starting to work on a new vocabulary topic. It’s a great way for students to continue receiving target language input but in a new way. Plus, we get to move around AND listen to música in Spanish. Win, win, win!
We listen to part of a song and then I pause the music. Everyone freezes and then repeats a word after me. If there are actions that go with the words, do those too. An extension of this activity is to have student leaders shout out a word for the class to repeat. This works well once students are a bit more confident with their new words.
*I encourage you to be mindful of your specific students for this activity. There are some class groups I choose not to play Freeze Dance with as the unstructured movement time causes some issues.
Tour the School
Teaching about the different places at school? Go there! Every year my second graders learn how to talk about where they’re going at school. On our first day of the unit, I line my class up and we take a field trip around our school building. At each stop, students hear me talk about the place in Spanish. I ask a bunch of yes/no questions to keep them engaged with Spanish. Then we move on to another place.
Our final project in this unit has students moving to the different places in school taking pictures that they then use to create a video. More movement!
Scavenger Hunt around School (or at least part of it)
Learning about the rainforest and different rainforest animals is a favorite unit in my first grade classes. I love to hang photos of rainforest animals in the first grade hallways. Then during class I send small groups out on a “rainforest adventure.” They are tasked with finding animals and taking a photo with their iPad. They can then use those photos for another activity in class.
This type of activity can be done with a variety of different topics. Once you start brainstorming and intentionally planning for movement within your lessons, it gets easier and easier to find ways to include it often.
Final Thoughts on Planning for Movement
Some students need to move more often than others. Allowing certain students to move in non-distracting ways can be a game changer. I have found that one on one conversations with students about positive ways they can move during whole group instruction to be quite helpful.
I can think of some students who prefer to do their individual work while standing instead of sitting. Years ago I would have asked them to sit but I now realize, it doesn’t matter!
Another student likes to stand and move around in the back of the classroom while we do whole group work. That way he has tons of room and is not distracting to those around him.
Our job as teachers is always a work in progress. I encourage you to start small and just try one new movement activity–see how it goes!
Woah, start the countdown to the end of the school year! I love this time of year. You can actually feel the energy and excitement in the air as the weather gets warmer and the calendar moves closer to summer.
I find myself looking at my planner every year around this time–trying to make sure I can fit everything in and still have time for some fun end of year activities before we send the kids home for summer.
My Favorite End of Year Activities for Spanish Class
Reading Stories
It won’t come as a surprise that I love teaching with stories. Reading and talking about summer can be a fun way to capture student attention towards the end of the school year.
Kindergarten & 1st grade
I have several super simple stories that I choose from for kindergarten and first grade at the end of the school year. I have several in the Hay un Animal series that are a fun way to review basic vocabulary and structures they’ve learned throughout the school year.
2nd grade
My second graders love reading the story, El Verano de Llama. We read the story, act it out, connect the story to our own opinions, and match up photos with sentences. After all that hard work, I love to bring out a student favorite and do a Kahoot based on the story.
3rd grade
My third graders learn about Puerto Rico and I’m so hoping we have time to read the fabulous story, El Chivo en la Huerta, by Mundo de Pepita. This is such a fun story to read and act out. The story is more involved than others they’ve read and I love to see students rise to the challenge.
End of Year Review Games
Celebrating what students have learned throughout the school year can help end the year on a positive note. Review games with content they already know is such a great confidence booster at the end of the year. Plus it’s fun to see their faces light up as students find they easily know the answers.
I love to mix it up and have some lessons with technology and some without. My favorite techy review games are Kahoot, Blooket, and Baamboozle.
I don’t play it often and perhaps that’s why they love it, but a good old fashioned game of Bingo is my favorite non-tech review game. It never fails–the lesson following a Bingo lesson has students requesting to play it again. 😂
Walk to Read Activities
I find students to have extra squirrely energy as the year winds down. This always has me looking for ways to intentionally allow for them to move. Walk to Read or Write the Room activities are great for that!
Since I don’t have a classroom dedicated to Spanish, I tend to use Walk to Read more often. That way I can set it up in the grade level hallway and use it with each class I teach.
In my 1st and 2nd grade classes I’ve found great success keeping things simple using this activity that focuses on basic sentences with colors. First, I post the clues around the hallway for students to find. They aren’t really “hiding,” just taped on the walls with the goal of having to walk around to find them.
Students have to go out and find one clue at a time. After reading it, they come back to their desk and color the correct letter the correct color. Then they can head back out to the hall in search of another clue.
Printing the clues on colored paper helps them stand out a little better. *There’s nothing worse than making it too challenging at this level! (And when you have limited time for your lesson…)
You can create a Walk to Read Activity with whatever content that makes the most sense for your students. They could read sentences describing an animal or a shape and then come back to color it. They could read opinion sentences written by people at school and then record it. Once you start brainstorming, the possibilities are endless!
Go Outside and Play
Lastly, it’s so great to just take a day and let the kids play outside. I love to bring groups of students outside to draw with chalk. It’s a simple way to get outside while still incorporating our content. If we’re working on a story, I have them draw their favorite part of the story.
Planning fun lessons that you’ll enjoy teaching can definitely help you make the most of the last few weeks of school. ¡Suerte, profes!