One of the areas of teaching Spanish with comprehensible input where I struggle is the idea that almost everything we teach is in the third person. “ There was a girl. She was smart and interesting. She met a boy. He was also smart and interesting. Then one day, there was a problem…” Right? This is the outline for most comprehensible input stories. Students can tell me loads about other ... Read More about How to Teach the Spanish Preterite with Comprehensible Input

Spanish adjectives is a unit that appears at the beginning of almost any Spanish I curriculum. What middle school or high school student doesn’t love talking about themselves or their friends? As Spanish teachers, our number one goal is to motivate students to communicate, so why not choose a topic that they already love,  right?  Whether you are using a traditional Spanish textbook or ... Read More about How to teach Spanish adjectives

If you’re using a traditional textbook, you will most certainly have to teach a unit on stem changing verbs in Spanish. They usually coincide with vocabulary related to sports (juega, pierde), talking about your classes (comienza, prefiere), or ordering in a restaurant. (pide, sirve).  Teaching stem changing verbs in Spanish is all about spelling, and let’s face it, with autocorrect, ... Read More about How to teach stem changing verbs in Spanish

Most traditional textbooks teach spanish pronouns and ser as one of the very first grammar units. Through experience, I have learned that teaching the conjugations of ser before students know what conjugations are, is pointless.  Instead, I teach es and son as vocabulary words during storytelling and students acquire them naturally. When it comes time to teach Spanish pronouns though, ... Read More about How to teach Spanish pronouns and the verb ser