¡Hola profe! April is here and you know what that means – longer days, warmer weather, and, with Earth Day being this month, you have a perfect opportunity to teach an environment unit to your Spanish students!
What I love most about teaching about the environment is that there are SO MANY resources out there that can be utilized in the classroom. Caring for the environment is a contemporary issue and so you’ll be able to find a TON of authentic material to use in your classrooms – news articles, videos/audios, posters, brochures, and more! Not only that, but if you teach AP and/or are preparing your younger students to take AP one day, protecting the environment addresses the Global Challenges theme.
I teach an environment unit to my Novice-High/Intermediate-Low students in Spanish 2 and this week, I wanted to share some activities that I use in my unit. (I also teach a different environment unit to my Intermediate-Mid/Intermediate-High – click here to see the activities I use with them!)
With my Spanish 2 students, we learn about the environment and review regular and irregular present-tense verbs. This is a great way to incorporate a grammatical concept in context!
Here are some of my favorite environment and the present tense activities:
#1: Comprehensible Reading.
Write a quick narrative about what you do to help the environment. Include as much pertinent vocabulary as you can! Include cognates and other familiar words to help your students understand the text. Then, come up with some comprehension activities for your students to complete! (Not sure what activities to do with an authentic article? Check out this blog post for ideas!)
If you love the idea of a comprehensible reading, but don’t love the idea of writing your own, I’ve got you covered!
#2: Listen to TV clips or other audios that discuss the environment and conservation.
It is also super easy to find video and audio clips that pertain to the environment! An Internet search will pull up countless results. Find the one that best suits your needs and create some comprehension questions/activities. (Not sure what activities to do with audio clips? Check out this blog post for ideas!)
I totally get it if the idea of sorting through video and audio files seems daunting – there’s so much material out there! I’ve sifted through a lot of it and have come up with a set of audio activities with five different audios featuring native Spanish-speakers discussing the environment! Grab the set below – lesson plans = done!
#3: Have students analyze their environmental habits and present them to others.
Students can create a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation in which they describe what they do to protect the environment, how often they engage in these activities, and how these activities are environmentally-friendly.
If you like this idea, you don’t need to create it yourself – I’ve already done it for you! Grab the project/presentation directions, rubric, and active listening sheet below!
#4: Scrambled Sentences Puzzle
Write some (6-9) sentences in Spanish pertaining to the environment/conservation. The sentences can be as simple or complex as you like, as appropriate for your students! Then, you type them up in large font, print as many sets as you’ll need for your class, laminate them, and cut out each individual word. Pro tip: Print each set on different color card stock. This will help keep you organized! Place each set of mixed-up sentences into a plastic baggie or an envelope for safe-keeping.
In my classroom, this is a group activity – I think groups of 3 are ideal, but you can make this work with groups of 2 or 4 as well. When you are ready to have your students do the activity, have groups put their desks together (if they do not already sit in groups) so that they have a large surface area to work with, or have them sit on the floor so they can spread out. Students should open the plastic baggies or envelopes and get out all of the words they’ll use to form their sentences. Then, it is their job to unscramble the sentences you wrote and put them back together!
Want to try this out? Check out my ready-to-print environment and the present tense scrambled sentences puzzle below – AND there is a digital option for Google Slides included too!
#5: Play games!
My students LOVE to play games in class, and I’ll get that yours do, too! You can use electronic gaming platforms like Kahoot!, Blooket, or Gimkit, but sometimes I prefer low/no-tech gaming options too. You can make a board game to practice the vocabulary and grammar or make a Jeopardy-style trivia game. These are interactive, hands-on options that will reinforce the concepts, but will also keep your students engaged and having fun!
Grab some games below and get ready for the fun to start!
I hope this was helpful and gave you some ideas that you can use in your classroom! Have a wonderful week, profe!
Señora Q 