When you get back from Winter Break, how do you start off the “New Year” in Spanish class? I’m always torn- do I jump right back into the unit we were in before the break? Do I take some time to do something a little more fun, but not necessarily part of the unit?
And then I think… Heck! What I LOVED about being in Spanish class when I was a student were the EXTRA, FUN things that helped me learn about culture and use my language creatively!
So here are some of my favorite Spanish Class New Years Activities to welcome un nuevo año!
New Years Group Writing Challenge
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, you may have come across this idea before…. it’s one of my favorites! In this activity, I use groups of 4 students to create a great piece of writing. They work together to make the best story and try to beat out the other groups for creativity (and/or accuracy and whatever other requirements I want to set.) In this challenge, they are creating a New Year’s Mascot! In the US, we have a Bunny for Easter, a Fairy to collect lost teeth, Santa Clause for Christmas, but we don’t have a mascot for New Years! Students have specific requirements to include in their writing, and I just change up the requirements based on what year of Spanish each class is! Easy, low prep activity, especially for right after a long vacation! HERE it is if you want to check it out!
Spanish Class New Years Resolutions
This is a great time to teach or review the future tense. With Year 1 and 2 students, we can use the Ir + a + infinitive to tell what they are going to do this year, and for more advanced students, we can use the Future Tense to say what they WILL do.
There are lots of ways to create a fun list of Spanish New Years Resolutions! Students can create on a Google Doc or even a Google Slide, and add pictures and color to their work. These could be printed and hung up in your classroom! I’ve seen some teachers have students create a mini-notebook with a page for each resolution too!
New Years Future Fortune Tellers
Do you remember those paper fortune tellers that we used to make by folding the paper? It would fit on our fingers and thumbs, and you would have another person pick a number or color that they could see on the outside? Then you would spell or count, and they would pick something from the inside? And last, you would open a flap to reveal their fortune! “You will have 18 cats!” “You will marry your dream person!” “You will be rich!”
HERE is the activity I do with my students! It has a video in Spanish to teach them how to make the paper fortune tellers, which are called “Comecocos” in Spanish! Then there is an assignment for them to complete to use the future tense to write fortunes. The students have a lot of fun with this! Once the fortune tellers are made, I have them use them by switching classmates for several rounds!
Spanish Class Goal-Setting For the New Year
At my school, coming back from winter break we have about 3 weeks until the 2nd quarter marking period ends. But there’s never a bad time to set new goals or revisit the ones we set earlier. I have 2 different goal-setting documents that I use regularly with my students.
One is a printable (if you want) document that has students list their goals for Spanish class and the steps they will take to achieve them. I usually use this at the beginning of a new school year, but why not have it at the beginning of a new calendar year? Have students add their own decorative touches, print, and BINGO! You have a new bulletin board!
Or, try this doc! At our school, classwork and homework can be recorded into the gradebook, but does not directly impact their GPA. However, students don’t always immediately see the relationship between completing learning activities for practice and the grades they earn on assessments. I have students calculate their own average for “non-graded” school work, and reflect on how that average may have been related to their GPA. Then we set a new goal for the next time period.
Find both of these activities for FREE in the month of December in my TpT store! Click here to download them now!
Feliz año nuevo!
Wishing everyone a healthy and happy new year!
Resources:
El comecocos: Part of a Future Tense mini-bundle
New Year’s Mascot Group Writing Challenge
