Teaching Tips for the Spanish Classroom

Dear Teachers,

I hope these teaching tips help you deliver a dynamic Spanish class where you enjoy teaching and your students learn a lot and can't wait to come back to the next class! Even with a great curriculum, you have to know how to teach it well. If you join my business facebook page, you will be notified each time there is a new posting.

Sing 'n Speak Spanish is not a full immersion program. We use a Comprehensible Input model to ensure students understand the words and phrases being taught. The use of TPR (total physical response) is a popular technique used by many foreign language instructors. It is much like a sign language where words and/or phrases have a gesture, movement, or facial expression associated with them. The teacher or the students can create these. The use of TPR allows teachers to speak Spanish most of the time in the classroom, using English only to ensure that the input is comprehensible to the students.

Click on each Teaching Tip below to view the contents of each tip.

Sincerely,

Julia Burnier

Teaching Tips for the Spanish Classroom

Tip 1: Keep the class lively and fast-paced.

Classroom maintenance problems often arise when students are restless or bored. As a dynamic teacher, you need to switch activities often so students don’t have a chance to get bored. Students should struggle just a bit to keep up with you.

A typical one hour class should include about eight different activities – an average of 7 – 8 minutes per activity. This is just a guideline, as some activities take longer than others. Be careful not to spend too much time on one particular activity.

Be jealous of your time! Do not allow students to sidetrack you (no storytelling by the students) and be keenly aware of how long you are spending on each activity. During lesson preparation, you might mark approximately where you think you should be halfway through the class. Check the time when you see this mark and see if you are close to where you need to be. Speed up or slow down appropriately.

Be willing to switch to another activity if it is taking too long or the students are losing focus.