Inside: Ideas for March in Spanish class. March Music Madness, a no prep activity for before and after Spring Break, resources to teach the Spanish festival, Las Fallas, and more ways to add culture to class this March.
Can you believe it is already almost March!? With state testing, breaks and Prom on the horizon, this is when it starts to get crazy at the high school level. Here are some of my favorite ideas to inject fun, culture and community into marzo.
This is the perfect time to plan for your march Music Madness bracket. See this post for all of the information of how I implement it and previous brackets. This year I am using my brand new mania musical 2021, which includes all current music. Or if you want to plan ahead and have more options, this Growing Music Bracket Bundle has resources for four separate brackets, as well as gets a new bracket each spring when I add a new one. Below is our bulletin board from a few years ago where we will track who moves on.
If you have younger students or a more conservative school, I suggest the 2021 YOUNGER music bracket.
The last few years I have loved teaching about a fun festival that takes place in Spain March 15-19, Las Fallas. I created this blog post brainstorming the unit years ago while teaching an elective culture and civilization class, but have used it each year since in Spanish 1 or 2 as a fun way to fill a short week around Spring Break. Students are obsessed with fire and anything that involves it. Depending on how much time you have, it could be a few day unit, or just a one day cultural exploration.
**This year I fully upgraded it to all digital so I can put everything all on Google Classroom for a mini unit for my Spanish 1. Get the ready to go unit here.
Spring Break
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While I personally get robbed of a Spring Break and instead just have a long weekend for Easter, I am always looking for a ready to go activity for the day we get back.
DISTANCE OR HYBRID - NEW SLIDES!
These slides are great for hybrid or distance learning as they are both editable Google Slideshows. Each set has 15 class starter slides & 15 Spring Break Chat Discussion Slides
The first 15 Weekend Chat class starter activity slides would be great to post as the first activity before or after the break. They are separated into reading, speaking & writing practice & could fill up a whole class period.
The second 15 in each set are general questions to click through and discuss or have students write down or discuss answers. You could pick a few to focus on and discuss before or after the break. For distance learning, you could go through the slides together or maybe have students answer the questions using Flipgrid and respond to each other, or have students go through them in small groups in breakout rooms.
IN PERSON - Find Someone Who
I love that I can print this out before leaving, do nothing related to school over break, and show up and just talk about what we did when we get back. To get a more detailed idea of how I use this activity after a break, check out this post. (plus you can use the TPT Digital version to do these paperless or distance as well).
Find Someone Who - Before Spring Break (future)
Find Someone Who - After Spring Break (past)
Other Ideas
While I am not sure how much more I can fit in March, here are a few more ideas.
St. Patrick's Day
While not immediately culturally connected to the Spanish speaking world, in my mom's 100% Irish family, it is one of the most important days of the year. If you have ways of how you could connect it, let me know!
Semana Santa Resources
When I taught at a Catholic school, holy week was a perfect way to combine the culture of the Spanish speaking world, and religion. I collected resources to use in this post, for what will be the last week in March this year.
What did I forget? What would you add?
originally posted 2.26.18 - updated 2.21.21