Fun Spanish Class Activities for Back to School
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If you have new students to welcome to your Spanish classroom or just want to kick off the new year in a positive way, these fun Spanish class activities for back to school will help make everyone at ease. Choose from independent, small groups, and whole class activities for your students.
Spanish class can be really overwhelming, so finding ways to make them feel comfortable and confident will help throughout the year! These back to school activities are perfect for middle school and high school classes.
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Bulletin Board for Back to School
Part of getting ready for the first student day is having your room ready! These colorful bulletin board options are a great way to show off new vocabulary words with visual support on the word walls, or encourage a positive fresh start to the new year with your Spanish students! Word walls include cognates, Spanish greetings, and school supplies to help your students prepare for different Spanish activities you’ll be doing throughout the year.
Classroom Management
A good way to set a positive tone with your students, especially as a new teacher, is to make sure you have your classroom policies ready. You can co-create your classroom rules, but having your syllabus in place for your various grade levels is a great thing! The main topics to cover in your syllabus include:
- course description
- classroom expectations
- required supplies
- grading information
- classroom policies
- discipline
- attendance policies
- your contact information
The First Day of School with Spanish Classes
A great way to start the year is in the target language. I like to jump right into Spanish on the first day of the year! It helped set my class apart from other subjects that are going through the syllabus and reading rules and expectations. Set structure for your students while you surprise them with how much Spanish they know already!
Check out my plans for the first few days of school for Spanish class by clicking here.
If you aren’t teaching novices this year and instead are working with Spanish 2 and up, it can be a little tricky. They’re not starting from scratch, and you may have a mix of students who know each other. This blog post shares ideas for what you can do with your upper level Spanish classes in the new school year.
First Week of Spanish Class Lesson Plans
I know right away students can feel nervous about hearing or seeing a lot of Spanish. Therefore, my first unit of the year focuses on using cognates as a tool to support themselves! We do a lot of reading, listening, and games to help them look and listen for cognates in the language! This unit bundle is everything you need to spend five full class days on cognates.
Icebreaker First Day Activities for Spanish Class
At the start of a new year, semester, or quarter, it’s nice to do some team building in the classroom! I have always found that students are more comfortable taking risks in front of each other if they have done some getting to know you activities with their classmates!
It’s a good idea to start building relationships in your classroom community and these are a great way to do it. Conversation cards, bingo games and more – check them out in this blog post with 15 easy icebreaker activities or Spanish back to school lessons.
Name Game
There are many different ways your students can get to know each other, but let’s start with a simple name game! I just call this “The Ball Game”. Students ask each other, “¿Cómo te llamas?” and answer as they toss the ball around. See a demo in this quick post here!
First Weeks of Spanish Class
After your first week of Spanish class lessons, you might be wondering what to do next! A great idea for your first weeks of Spanish class is to introduce the Spanish-speaking countries. That way, as you’re including various countries in your lessons throughout the end of the year, you won’t hear comments like, “Isn’t that next to Mexico?” *facepalm* These Spanish-speaking countries activities include free templates for map labeling independent work, as well as some great ideas to practice. Click here to see the post and grab the freebie!
Next in the beginning of the year, I always recommend working on high frequency verbs with your students. Check out this blog post on high frequency verb units for a great back to school activity with your novice learners.
Review Games
As your upper levels are getting back into things, you might want to play some Spanish review games with them to get their brains back into things. Check out this blog post with 13 review games for Spanish class!
Back to School Activities for Spanish Class
Actividades de Regreso
I hope these ideas have been helpful for you! There are a lot of options for language learning and instilling a love of Spanish in your students, but no matter what you do, you can build those strong relationships and get your entire class growing in their language skills. Happy Back to School time!
