What to Do During Open House for Spanish Class

It’s back to school season and many schools do an open house or meet the teacher night. This might be very relaxed, or it could be a super structured evening, depending on how your school runs the event. Let’s talk about some options for what to do during open house for Spanish class!

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Open House for Spanish Class Ideas

Your school might run open house with a set time you need to be there, like from 4:00-7:00 and students and their guardians can roam the school and pop in to check out their classes. However, you might also have a more structured night where they come in and follow a bell schedule to move from room to room. Depending on your school’s plan, there are a few ways you can handle your open house for Spanish class.

Ideas for Open House for Spanish Class:

• put up meet the teacher slides
• set out handouts with a letter, info, and expectations
• engage with grown-ups and introduce yourself
• teach a mini lesson

Let’s look at those options in more detail!

Relaxed Open House for Spanish Class

If your school has scheduled open house for families to just move from room to room, you probably don’t want to do any formal presentation. It’s tricky with timing as people come and go, they’ll miss some info as they come in, and might miss the end as they hop along to the next class. Instead, let them do things in a more self paced fashion!

First, set up your meet the teacher slides. You can either have the presentation loop so they can watch it til it’s done, or you can do one slide with your contact info and telling them to grab the handouts. Either option works!

Next, I like to lay out handouts with things I would usually tell them if I were addressing the whole group, and let them just pick them up and scan them. I always have my 90% in the Target Language handout available, as well as my syllabus. Sometimes I set out a letter to them, too!

Whichever handouts you have, I highly recommend making them something visually appealing to make it easy for them to scan & understand!

Once your room is all set up, the rest is easy! Hang out by your door, welcome them in, introduce yourself and learn their names, direct them to the handouts and let them know you’re available if they have any questions. That’s it!

Structured Open House for Spanish Class

If your school runs open house with a much more rigid schedule, I recommend almost the exact opposite plan! Instead of a laid back, check in, meet and greet, you can teach a “mini-class” so guardians get a sample of what time in your classroom is like for their students.

La Maestra Loca shared about this on her blog and I tried it out a few years ago and loved how it went! She’s even linked her slideshow for free. Woohoo! While she breaks it down thoroughly and I definitely recommend checking out her post for details on how she does it, I wanted to share how I tweaked it to fit in our allotted time.

As the bell rang and families moved to the next class, I welcomed them in and had them choose a seat. I do a VERY short intro of me, then gave them the ground rules for story telling – basically just letting them know to nod if they understand or give me a thumbs up, and to answer out loud. From there, we did a Movie Talk!

We did not make it very far, but we did enough that I knew they got the “feel” of how it works with the teacher providing lots of support and visuals, asking questions, circling, and so on. We then have a chat about how they felt, and (if there’s time!) a conversation about learning vs acquiring language.

On their way out, I give them my 90% in the Target Language handout as well as my syllabus. My contact info is on there if they have any questions!

Ideas for Meet the Teacher Night in Spanish Class

I hope one of those plans fit your needs for your meet the teacher night, or back to school night (whatever your school calls it)! You might be feeling stressed this time of year, but you don’t have to pull out all the stops, and you can have a great night getting to know your students’ families!

More Back to School Ideas

• First Day Lesson Plan
• Getting to Know You Activities
• Cognates Unit Plan

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