End of the Year Tech-Free Spanish Class Activities

 What to do on the last day of school in Spanish class?

The last few days of Spanish class are often tech-free at my school! Kids turn in chromebooks one of the last few days, meaning I can’t rely on online vocab games to keep us busy! 

In this blog post, I’ll be including some tech-free ideas of how to maintain engagement with students while still practicing Spanish! 

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1. Show & Tell Presentations: Pretty self-explanatory, but these presentations are something I have done in the past, when grades are done, and computers are turned in. A rough outline of how I did it was:

1. Give students a paper with your expectations of what needs to be shared for the Show & Tell (keep it short & sweet, a 45-90 second presentation is plenty!)

2. Model a great example for students with something of your own - maybe pick something they totally wouldn’t expect to be something you’re into! If it’s too large, tell kids they can send you a picture for you to project for them on the screen (one of my FFA students wanted to bring in her goat 😆)

3. Give kids a day or two to prepare (you can decide if you want them to have notes or not)

4. Take a day or two for students to Show & Tell! 

1. You can ask them so questions to help them make it longer (some kids just can’t think of how to elaborate, but you can sort of nudge them a bit with your prompting, to share more details)

2. The other students can ask questions too! 

5. You can make the Show & Tell Presentations “take up” as much time as you need, to get you to the end of the year. Some years I’ve done it in 2 days, 1 to prep, 1 for everyone to share, and other years I’ve had it last a couple days longer. Be flexible, and remember to have fun - we want kids to have positive associations with Spanish class, remember!?

2. “Find Someone Who” activities that use the Immediate Future (ir + a + infinitive) or the Simple Future tense (infinitive + ending)

1. These activities are perfect for any level of Spanish, because the worksheets have variations of scaffolding to help students form the tenses, if they haven’t had a lot of practice with these tenses. 

2. Find Someone Who activities gets kids out of their seats, Speaking, Listening, Reading & Writing - what a win! 

3. In both of these resources, I include a bunch of ideas of how to extend these worksheets beyond the 25 questions, 12 sentences and 3 illustrations such as:

1. Circling vocabulary via Listening, «Quién va a ___?» (have students stand up or raise their hands if it applies to them)

2. Circling vocabulary via Listening AND Speaking «Quién va a ___?» (have students share their findings after surveying their peers)

3. Circling vocabulary via Reading, showing their illustrations on a document camera, and having students pick which sentence is describing the illustrations.

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4. You can read more info about these interactive Find Someone Who activities for Immediate Future & Simple Future by clicking the hyperlinked words! 

3. School Scavenger Hunt:

1. Especially if students have learned the Imperative tense, a school scavenger hunt can be a lot of fun! Usually a day prior, I have my students work in pairs/small groups to think of places in the school to “look for”.

1. I collect their ideas, and make a scavenger hunt on a simple Google Doc.

2. I cut each part of the scavenger hunt into strips of paper, and the morning of, tape these strips of paper in the somewhat hidden places around the school. 

3. Usually I allow kids to form their own groups, no larger than 3-4 students. I give the first clue to the first group, and stagger the start times for each group so that they can’t just follow the first group. I have a giant stopwatch projected on the board, and I usually space the groups out every 2-3 minutes. 

1. To keep track, write on the whiteboard, Group 1 started at 0 min, Group 2, 2 min, etc. and whatever time they have when they come back in the room, I subtract the start time, accordingly. 

4. Some ideas for “clues” in the past were:

1. Take a selfie by the door near Mr. X’s room 

2. Take a picture of 3 things that start with “B” in Spanish (kids have to show me their photos as evidence or if they forgot to do this part, they get time “added” to their final time)

3. Find the next clue near the cafeteria entrance

4. Find the next clue in Page X of the book on the third shelf in the library

5. I usually have one last clue in my room, and it says something like “Tell Señora “we’re done” in Spanish”, or something to that effect. Usually by the time the first group gets in my room, all of the other groups have left, so it works out!

6. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, this DOES take a lot of prep work and thinking backwards to make sure you’re putting the clues in the correct order, so shh, sometimes after I have a good scavenger hunt figured out, I reuse it the next year and don’t really take into account the student’s ideas from the day before. Don’t judge, it’s the end of the year, and we’re all tired!

I hope these ideas inspire you to finish the year strong & with purpose! 

Let me know in the comments below, what non-tech activities do you do, to finish the school year?