This is a fun activity to review a scene in a book or a portion of a story it is called Build Me A Scene and is an improv exercise. We are reading the novel Esperanza as a class and I told the students that I was the narrator of the book and had just arrived to the bus station in Guatemala City and they needed to recreate what I was seeing as I walked into the bus station. They needed to collaborate with each other to make sure that they represent the most important elements of the scene. You can certainly choose to do this in small groups or as a class. I chose to do it as a whole class activity.


I choose whole class or small group depending upon my goal for the activity, how much time I want to spend and how in depth I want to go. It is successful and well received both ways.


Students needed to give me a thorough picture and each student needed to tell me who or what they were and an additional piece of information having to do with why they are in the scene. I am pretty strict about them staying in the target language. This is a re-tell and we have thoroughly discussed the story or chapter, vocabulary has been front-loaded and reviewed extensively throughout and in many cases posted on the board. They are not allowed to be someone or something that they cannot identify and give a detail about in the target language.


This is just a great opportunity for fun, movement and interaction with a story or text.

A few years back, I got sick of having to re-make my classroom posters after having to put them up and take them down so many times and I began using vinyl banners. These are so durable, they will long outlast me and their colors are bright, vibrant and eye-catching! They are also easy to take along with me when I speak at a conference or teach a class at a different location.

I have all of these banners saved in a portfolio on Vistaprint.com. I have no connection to them, other than really liking their products and thinking that they are really worth it when they have a 50% off sale!

I will share pictures of the banners and links to them for anyone who is interested. The link to each banner is in the button found below each banner. Vistaprint currently has a 50% off sale running and they are very inexpensive.

Useful words and questions words are one big banner that I cut into two.

I like to spend a week with a story. If I ask a story on a Monday, I want to get mileage out of it each day of the week. With just a small twist or some small novelty to keep it new. The key has been to develop an arsenal of different ways to do that.

The talk show option is a great way to play with the story and let student actors come up with their own thoughts about the story and backstory by being interviewed as the character.

Once we've told the story with actors, it is fun to invite the characters back to be interviewed on a talk show. I have someone play the talk show host and ask questions and then we will at some point take questions from the audience. Sometimes the class takes off on their own asking questions and needs no encouragement from me. Sometimes I throw in a question to give them an idea of directions they might go. It all depends on the class and the story, but we have always enjoyed this option. The key is to take it to just the right place and to know when you have reached the sweet spot and then wrap it up before interest wanes....as with any good activity. Leave them with the memory of how fun it was so that they want to do it again. Don’t keep it going until the well runs dry and you’re beating a dead horse.

I love movie trailers. they are short and engaging. I make them myself when I am going to introduce a book to hook my students. Movie trailers are even more engaging when the students create them.
When I have a story that has gone really well (they can't all be homeruns...) and we aren't ready to let it go yet and there are still some miles to be squeezed out of it, I turn to the movie trailer. At the end, when my students know the story solid, we basically create a shrinking oral summary of the story. We talk about what must be told to give the gist of what happens and leave cliff hanging questions unanswered that would pique curiosity followed by a final hook statement. Probably 5-7 sentences total just as in a real movie trailer.
What is the setting?
Who are the main characters and what do they do?
What are the questions that you don't get answered until the very end of the story.
the last one we did in class was from one of Jalen Waltman's stories about a cat that has a good business in his neighborhood.
This is what we came up with for the final movie trailer script that I wrote on the board:

This can be as short and sweet or long and drawn out as you want it to be. I tend to keep them simple, because you never lose anyone's interest. This one probably took about 10 minutes to throw together, but more realistically I would think 15 minutes. (This is a particularly focused group of kids that get things done for me.) Once this is written you are ready to film it. We decide who will represent the characters or hold the stuffed animals or puppets to represent the characters, who will read the script with great drama and huge pregnant pauses and then I pull up Youtube and find some suspenseful movie trailer music to play in the background. We do a practice run and then we record. You can be as picky or as detail-oriented as you want, this particular one took only 2 takes (a very low-budget film) Don’t get bogged down by acting or props or any sort of perfection. Let it be what it is and then have fun talking about it however it turns out, because you get more repetition when you do the screening and you can talk about it all over again. This is a quick and easy re-tell that the kids really seem to enjoy and I know I do as well.

Here is another example of a trailer where the students did a little bit of acting for their story.

This song goes to the tune of “Here we go round the mulberry bush.” It teaches the most common description words that we use in my classes. It is fast and furious and a million laughs. I do signs/gestures for all of the words and will include a video of me doing the gestures, as well as the video that I project for my students to follow when we sing the song.
Many of the words my students already know when we learn the song, which is at some point after the Christmas break for first year students. If you do storytelling, you will have used many of these words too as you develop the characters of your stories. This song serves many purposes for me, it is a way to dump vocabulary into my kids and they don’t even realize it’s happening, as they are too busy trying to beat each other to coordinate saying the words and doing the signs. They want to do it all the time, which is great because we get a ton of repetition. It is also a great active and quick brain break that serves as a review.
I hope you enjoy it!

My students love this game!
What do you need: students play in pairs, each pair has a cup or a stuffed animal....something they can grab, and a chair

Set up: object they will grab is placed on top of the chair and students stand on opposite side of the chair.

How to play: Teacher calls out body parts and the students touch the correct body part. When the teacher yells, “Taza, or vaso, or animal” or whatever you are having them grab, the student who grabs the object first wins the round. The loser of the round sits. Students readjust to find a new partner and a new round begins. If there is an odd number, the extra student sits out until the following round. You play rounds until you get to the final 2 and play the final round to determine the winner.

This game goes fast, gets the wiggles out, is a lot of fun and is a great review! I have been playing it for a few years now and have always played it with body parts, but I saw someone else share a post the other day and they play it with classes and call the game Cape! (Latina Hilara http://www.latinahilara.com/kinetic-activities-get-em-out-of-their-seats) but they played the game using a wide variety of vocabulary words and signs....WOW! What an awesome new way to play an old favorite! I have gestures/signs for all of my verbs and many vocabulary words. This game has so many more possibilities than what I originally was able to see!....I am loving it! It is like I have a brand new game all over again! I hope you and your students enjoy it!

Higher or lower is a great and easy game that probably takes 5-6 minutes to play. All that you need is a deck of cards. You will have the cards in a stack on a table in front of you or hold them in your hand. You will show the top card (face up) and the student has to guess higher or lower (Ace is always low and king is always high. If a student guesses and it happens to be the same value card when you flip that you just showed them, then you flip one additional card. ie. They are looking at a jack and you flip over a jack, you then just flip another card.) You either line students up and walk down the line to each of them to have them make their guess or you can have them move around you in a circle and come to you as they pass by for their guess. As they get out, they go back to their seat to sit. Last one in the game wins.
I have not had problems with the kids who are out not remaining involved. They are usually competitively supporting someone who is still in the game and cheering each other on. They get very excited!
ENJOY,

There are many ways to teach emotions and feelings, but I love songs. I love making up silly songs to help me remember things, I love singing them, I love coming up with gestures for them and I love the energy that they can bring to my classroom. I use them to teach, but I use them at carefully timed moments to serve as a brain break. It is a great opportunity to blow off some steam, be silly AND to practice useful vocabulary.

The song ¿Cómo estás tú? goes to the tune of That’s not my name by the Ting Tings....great song 😂 but even better as ¿Cómo estás tú?

​Here is a link to the video with the music that I play in class and we sing along to it and do gestures. the second video is of me singing and doing the gestures that we use in class.

My classroom requests song is, by far, one of my students’ all-time favorites. This is my major TPR load for them in the first several weeks of school. We gradually learn them and what they mean and the gestures that go along with them over a couple days in class and then I do the big song unveil....This is the first song that I do with them and it introduces the opportunity for them to see that silly is ok and we can still learn while we are having fun. I am including the PDF of the lyrics (I prefer using tú commands, but I also have one with ustedes commands. Feel free to reach out if you would like a copy of that.) a video of one class singing it and another video of me going slowly through the song and doing the gestures. The song goes to the tune of Take me out to the ballgame.
I hope you can use it. Enjoy! 

As a CI teacher, we are supposed to shelter vocabulary, but I do tend to do vocabulary dumps with songs that we sing regularly in my classroom. They are received with great enthusiasm by my students and I consider them a brainbreak that just keeps on giving!

We do calendar talk every day in my class and that always includes the weather. Calendar talk is generally fast, but for the first month or so, after we do the day and the date, we quickly get up and sing what is always a classroom favorite, “EL TIEMPO.” It is silly and I consider it a brain break.

The song goes to the tune of “she’ll be comin round the mountain.” I always project this pdf (below) on my screen as we sing and then as we talk about the day’s weather afterwards. I will also include a YouTube video of me doing the song with the gestures that we do when we sing it.

​i hope you enjoy it and can make use of it with your classes!
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