Spanish Beginners Lesson Plans for High School Class

Let’s plan your first month of Spanish class together! If you’re teaching middle school or high school Spanish students, these Spanish lessons will help you with the first month of Spanish lesson plans for your first year students! Let’s walk through ideas and lesson plans for spending time in the target language in this detailed blog post.

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Before the First Day of School

Even before the first day of school, there’s a few things you’ll want to think through. Consider your classroom management practices, information you’ll put on your syllabus, and explaining the importance of time in the target language and how comprehensible input works. Whew! That’s a LOT.

There are some topics your school hand book will cover for you, like how long is a class period, distance learning plans (if any!), and more. However, there are some specifics for your language learners you’ll want to cover on your syllabus. 

​Here’s a short list of what to include on your syllabus for your middle and high school students:

• course description
• classroom expectations
• required school supplies
• grading information – homework assignments, assessments & final exam
• classroom policies – cell phones, late work, retakes
• discipline
• attendance policies
• your contact information

​Are you a member of a larger department? If so, make sure to touch base with the other World Languages teachers. You want to make sure your wording and policies aren’t super different between languages to avoid students picking one language over the other, just because of certain policies.

If you would like some help thinking through some of those tricky procedures, check out my post on classroom rules for Spanish teachers here.

And, a great way to save some time during back to school is to look at an example. Check out my blog post here with more details on my Spanish class syllabus.

Back to School Night & Open House

This one falls in an odd spot – it might be before the first day of school, and it might not be! It will depend on how your school has scheduled things. However, I mentioned earlier how important explaining the importance of time in the target language and how comprehensible input works, and I wanted to talk about a few ways you can do that at open house night:

• Share this free 90% time in the target language hand out
• Use video clips to do a Movie Talk (free lesson plans for Back to School night shared here!)
• Do Special Person Interviews – either with a parent, or a special guest! 
• Project Meet the Teacher Google Slides to share info

Spanish Beginners Lesson Plans for the First Day

There’s a lot of different things you could do on the first day of school and I actually have free resources shared in my blog post here where I detail the first day of school activities for your beginners.

This is a dive right into the target language lesson plan to show students, rather than tell students, what comprehensible input “feels” like in Spanish class and what the school year will look like! And – bonus – it is so much fun!

Get the full walk through and free resources in the blog post here. 

Spanish Intermediate Lesson Plans for the First Day

While this blog post is focused on beginners, I wanted to share a few ideas if you teach upper levels of Spanish, because you won’t want to do that beginners lesson plan! Spanish 2 through AP Spanish are far too advanced for that.

Instead, check out these ideas as you’re lesson planning for your upper levels. Depending on your Spanish Curriculum and level of your students, there are a few different ideas and options for your students to fit what you need for the first day.

Following Up the First Day with Beginners

​Again, depending on the length of your class period and school schedule, how you follow it up will vary. I have usually had a “weird” schedule for the first few days of school – shortened class periods, drills, students getting swapped from class to class as their schedules change – so I tend to stretch out that first day!

After the card talk activity on Day 1, we’ll do a Write and Discuss. Then, I’ll have a short reading from every class period! ten we use that paragraph that we’ve just created together as a class for the next 2 days and I’ll just use it with any old reading activity.

Check out 17 activities you can do with any reading here!

You can really pick and choose from any of those readings. I tend to do choral translation, then volleyball reading, and then speed date translate. I’ve shared before how I love to do those three in that sequence because they build really nicely so that’s a great lesson plan as well! 

In each of those 3 activities, a “leader” will say the Spanish word or words and then the “follower” will translate what they just heard with the English words.

Check out these short videos explaining each one in more detail:

I might also do our first exit ticket on day 3 or so of the year, just depending on how things are going.

First Unit for Spanish Beginners

After those first few days of school when things start to get into a normal schedule, the first thing that I like to do in the school year is a cognates unit. I have a blog post and video where I’ve gone through that unit step by step, exactly what I do on every single day of that unit!

If you wanted to see exactly what I do in that unit you can check out that post here, but the short of it is is that we introduce what cognates are and then we practice with them like how can that be a useful tool for you in your language learning now and for the rest of the year because I want them to understand, “Oh I can use these things that I already know to support myself and to make sure I’m understanding the different reading activities and right all sorts of different activities we’re doing in Spanish class all year long!” So that’s the emphasis of the first full week unit.

Spanish IceBreakers and Getting to Know You Activities

After finishing up the first cognates unit for Spanish beginners, I like to start mixing in some more of those getting to know you and ice breakers. I tend to avoid these right away at the beginning of school and instead work them in more like brain breaks or even fast finishers. I really like to do things that are lower stress that are a little bit more individual than you might think of an icebreaker.

Check out this post here with 15 ideas for getting to know you activities with your middle school and high school students!

​Seating Charts

​You might be wondering how much time I let pass before I make seating charts! As a new teacher, I would start the first day of school with a seating chart, but I really didn’t like that! I swapped to using the character cards I mentioned in the first day of school lesson plan, and I do that until I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the students’ needs, behaviors, and personalities. Then, I sort them into small groups.

Check out my blog post here walking through my process on planning a seating arrangement for a class!

Spanish High Frequency Verbs Units

As we’re using those icebreakers we’re starting to get into more of the Spanish curriculum. This isn’t so much vocabulary lessons and how to conjugate irregular verbs as it is using the language and focusing on getting more of that comprehensible input into students!

We do 3 units really focusing on high frequency verbs in Spanish. These different high frequency verb units that are all based around a story and they start with an emphasis on just a few of the high frequency verbs.

From there we start to gradually add one more in as we go. We don’t want to overwhelm (remember, shelter vocab, not grammar!). We’re also recycling things from the previous weeks. 

Check out the complete high frequency verbs units here:

• High Frequency Verbs Unit 1 EL ELEFANTE
• High Frequency Verbs Unit 2 EL PERRO
• High Frequency Verbs Unit 3 EL GATO
• Cognates Unit + Units 1-3

Each of these full units include print lesson plans, Google Slides, and digital versions of each student activity page so you can choose what works best for the interactive activities with your students. They are a great way to work into the new language with your students!

There is also a mix of independent work, pairs, small groups, and whole class activities. There’s lots of variety built in so you can spend less time lesson planning.

More Lesson Planning for Spanish Beginners

Before you know it we’re a month into school and at that point that’s when I start to trickle in our start of class routine. That is a how are you feeling kind of check in, the weather and calendar talk. That’s the every single day start of class routine.

One of the most common questions I hear about this is, “Don’t students get bored with the same thing every day?” And the answer is, “No!”. This isn’t a half an hour, it’s very quick. The only time it takes longer is if there’s something to lean into and discuss – like how someone is feeling and they’re sharing about why, or if we might get let out early for snow, or if something special is going on this weekend during calendar talk. Otherwise, it’s very much “chat, chat, chat” aaaaand done!

Learn more about that start of class routine here!

We also introduce the different days of the week routines:

• Weekend Chat
• Free Voluntary Reading
• Música Miércoles
• Persona Especial
• Movie Talk or Picture Talk

Basically we do a start of class routine and then a different daily routine all week long. 

You might be thinking, “hey, that’s like 10-15 minutes of class what do you do for the rest of the class?” That’s when we do units that are based around stories!

Here is a unit based around a story that focuses on Spanish numbers, days of the week, and months of the year that is all based around a short story and different interactive ways to use the language in it!  

I do have a blog post about my process for planning a unit around a comprehensible story for your novices. Or, if you’d prefer to see a more detailed example, check out my blog post here showing how to take a story and use it over several days of class!

After doing the high frequency verbs units, I’ll get into story based units, talk about the Spanish-speaking countries, and do a cultural unit where it fits into the year. I also work in Sr. wooly units to break up the stories, too!

​Seasonal and Thematic Unit Resources

I have several blog posts on various topics that you might find helpful as you’re working through your curriculum map! Check them out below:

• Subject Pronouns
• Basic Greetings
• Spanish Alphabet
• Spanish Numbers
• Days of the Week
• Los Sentimientos
• Spanish Question Words
• Possessive Adjectives
• Present Tense Verb Conjugations
• New Vocabulary Activities
• El Tiempo
• La Ropa Clothing in Spanish
• La Ciudad
• En La Escuela
• La Comida
• La Familia
• Telling Time
• Reflexive Verbs
• Present Progressive in Spanish
• Gustar
• El Imperfecto
• Demonstrative Adjectives
• Los Quehaceres
• Doler y el cuerpo
• Los Deportes
• Preterite Car Gar Zar Verb Activities

And here are blog posts that might help as you plan to add in a cultural unit throughout the year!

• La Tomatina
• Hispanic Heritage Month
• Monarch Butterfly Migration
• Día de los Muertos
• La Navidad y los Reyes Magos
• Black History Month
• El Día de San Valentin
• Carnaval
• Semana Santa
• Las Alfombras de la Semana Santa
• Women’s History Month
• El Día de Sant Jordi
• El Cinco de Mayo
• La Comida
• Cooking Recipes
• Spanish Culture Class Resources

Learn about a Spanish-Speaking Country

Sometimes you want to do a deeper dive into a particular country rather than skimming the surface. Check out these blog posts and resources to help you plan your lessons on a specific Spanish-speaking country!

• Teaching Geography & Spanish-Speaking Countries
• Spanish Readers Organized by Country
• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Chile
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• El Salvador
• Equatorial Guinea
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Mexico *even more specific, check out my blog post on Oaxaca here!
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Puerto Rico
• Spain
• Uruguay
• Venezuela

​Beyond Beginners

If you’re teaching more than just Spanish 1 this year, check out my blog posts to help you with some of your other preps!

• Spanish Culture Class
• Heritage Spanish Speakers Classes

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