TWO FREEBIES: MLK and The Mitten

Are you looking for some FREE teacher resources for your January units? I have a couple of spanish packets that you might be able to use this month.

Martin Luther King Jr.

I have been creating some writing printables with an illustrated word bank to help beginning writers. I had not seen anything similar to this before and wanted a way to help ALL our students feel like successful writers. I have also been adding several versions of the writing activities to help teachers with differentiation in the classroom.

This MLK writing packet in Spanish follows that same format. I have added an illustrated word bank for beginning or struggling writers and also added other versions. I hope that you find this packet useful.
Click on the picture to find it on my Kinder Alphabet blog. It's available in English and Spanish.

The Mitten

I also have an emergent reader for the story of THE MITTEN/ El mitón. Click on the picture below to find it on my Bilingual blog.

See you there!

Parent conferences here we go!

Although it is a hectic schedule, I do like having the opportunity to talk to my students' parents during conferences. Knowing what is going on at home and connecting it to school is very important. I try to show the parents different ways on how they can help their child at home.  I begin my conference with a form that student fills one week prior to the conference, where the student evaluates their habits at school.  I absolutely love how honest my kindergartners are, and I also get to see which ones are too being hard on themselves. I usually have one or two students that have no behavior issues and they still say they need more work on one of the areas.  Click here to download this FREE resource:

 


 I hope you can use this with your students!  Have a great week,

Bathroom Management

A few cheap plates, expo marker and some velcro is all you need to make an incredibly simple bathroom management system that will enable you to keep tabs on which students are out of the room  and when.

My students simply use the bathroom hand signal to let me know if/when they need to use the restroom and sign out on the plate before leaving the room.

They then erase their name using the pom pom on the Expo cap when finished and return to their classroom work. 

Cheap, simple, and I am always aware of who is in the restroom at any given time!

All About Me Freebie

Today I am sharing with you all a quick "All About Me" freebie that can be used at the beginning of the school year to get to know your students a bit better and/or it could also be used throughout the year as a "Student of the Week" type activity! 

Younger students can draw in the provided spaces and older students can write and/or draw as well. 

Also, feel free to blow up the page to a size that best suits your needs! It would work great as a larger poster for the "Student of the Week" if that is what you intend on using it for as well!

Just click on the image to grab your free copy in Spanish/English :)!

Hope you are having a wonderful start to your school year!

Reading log freebie!

Teachers have two “New Year” celebrations: one in January and the other one in August. Start the year off right by establishing a routine for reading, even if your students are not able to read or write yet. 

This reading log is designed for beginner readers. It contains a parent letter (English/Spanish), and a reading log calendar (September-June). 

I hope you can use it in your class! Click on the picture to download. 

It is almost here!

Hi Everyone!

It is almost here!!! The day when we will get to meet our new "batch" of students is just a couple of days away for most of us.  It sure is exciting!!!

We teach a two way dual language model with a partner teacher. As we start gathering ideas of how we want our classrooms to look like,  we want to share with you a few tips that we have found to be key for our dual classes to run smoothly:

• In a co-teach situation, our goal is always to ensure that both classrooms mirror each other in order to make it easier for the students to learn academic content. Dual language classrooms that “mirror” each other are in fact classrooms where the lessons are carefully planned in a way that the content and skills acquired one day in one of the language classrooms enable students to build on and develop new skills in their other language classroom. 
• Plan with your partner teacher for similar routines and procedures so that your students feel more at ease switching back and forth between the two language classrooms every day. You don't want them to have to learn a new set of guidelines for each classroom. We actually have the same morning and afternoon procedures in both our classrooms.
• Always set aside a few minutes to meet with your partner teacher  at the end of every day. We meet to go over our lesson plan for that day and discuss how it went. Our meeting is short and sweet, but it helps us recap on what took place in both language settings and gives shape to the next day.

These are all simple tips, however they make a huge difference in helping our language learners experience success in a dual setting.

We hope you have an AMAZING school year! 

The Dual Trio

Bilingual Back to School Freebie & Sale

For all of our interactive notebook fans, we designed this special BACK TO SCHOOL FUN PACK just for you. This freebie is full of fun activities in both English & Spanish to help you get the school year off to a great start. Not only will your students have fun getting to know each other and the rules and routines of your class, but they will also practice creating and using common interactive notebook layouts. 

We're also excited to announce that we are participating in the site-wide back-to-school TPT SALE, and will be extending our sale one extra day through August 6th. During the sale, everything in our shop will be discounted up to 28% with the code BTS14.   

-Nicole Sanchez

Meet Eliceo - Interactive Notebook Giveaway

Hello! My name is Eliceo Sanchez and I am excited to be collaborating with so many amazing bilingual teachers on this blog. Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I was born and raised in a small town in the mountains of Puebla, Mexico. As a teen I moved to Minnesota in search of a better life for me and my family. I began learning English in school while working to support my family back in Mexico. A few years later I married Nicole, an elementary ESL teacher and had two children. We lived in Minnesota for several years, and then decided to move Yucatan, Mexico. 

After we made the move, I began teaming with Nicole to design and translate elementary curriculum and teach English here in the Yucatan. Through our experiences, we saw the need for quality bilingual educational materials, so we began posting our own resources and tips for teachers online during our spare time. As a native Spanish-speaker, and former ESL student I feel I bring a unique perspective to our teamwork, and look forward to continuing our efforts to support bilingual teachers around the world. 

OUR GIVEAWAY
This week our TpT store hit a major milestone of 2000 followers. To celebrate we're giving away 5 of our best-selling interactive notebooks. To enter, just fill out the rafflecopter below. The best part is you get to pick which notebook you win. As always, happy teaching!
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Motivated for Back to School

I know we are not ready (I am not ready). But with all the ads, pinterest and so on I feel like BTS is almost here.

I am still creating fun stuff for my kiddos. I will be fun having badges for our special days in school.

Feel free to print these badges for your students.

If you like them check my Back to School Bundle or my First day of School minibooks.

Have fun! 

Lita Lita

learning in Spain

Calendar time

  I noticed that I was doing all of the work for my kinders during calendar time. I sang the songs, asked and changed the date, changed the place value chart, counted to a 100, asked about the weather etc. That's why I decided to create a morning work routine where students would become more independent. 

     It took a whole year to make but I can finally say that it is ready. I created a morning work packet from September through June. I also created it the English version for my team. 

         This is how I use it in my classroom. My  students have different jobs each week. One of their jobs is "teacher assistant", he/she sings all of the songs (good morning, days of the week, colors etc) and the "police officer" goes through our class rules.  
I then review the calendar and read the instructions for that day on the morning work routine.

Here is a short video explaining Mi trabajo de la mañana

       I still meet with my students during calendar time, that is something I will never change. I need to activate prior knowledge, establish a routine, talk to my students and prepare my students for the day.

At the beginning of the year my students need a lot of scaffolding to complete the morning work routine. I decided to practice with them for a week so they could get used to this activity. Eventually, they learn how to do it all by themselves. 

 Check them out! You could get each month separate, by bundles (3 months), or buy the whole year and save some $!

 

Interactive Word Walls

Hey y'all!!!

We wanted to share with you what to us is one of the key elements to a successful dual language classroom: yes, we are talking about interactive word walls. Year after year, we see our learner's exceed our expectations when it comes to building meaningful sentences and even stories using our interactive word wall.  

Our students use word walls to sort words by initial or ending sounds, by parts of speech, to classify nouns, to divide words in syllables, to complete sentence stems, to form plurals, and to write short stories, riddles, and poems! The possibilities are endless!!!

Our word walls started simple, just with words written on index cards on white magnetic boards and lockers.  

As we have seen the engagement that takes place when the students interact with the word wall, we have continued to add words, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, adjectives, etc.  We want to give the students as much tools to build meaningful sentences and have fun with the language at the same time.

As we stated earlier,  we started with very simple word walls, however if you want to save yourself some of the work, here is a product we created that we think you may find very useful!
In this product have we put together all the elements we have been using so far. It is ready to use! It will be 50% off in our tpt store until the end of July.

Here is a freebie that your students can use as they interact with your word walls!

Meet Nicole Sanchez - Bilingual Blog Hop, Freebies & Giveaway!

Hello! My name is Nicole Sanchez and I am excited to be teaming up with so many of my awesome colleagues on this collaborative blog! I'll be blogging on the 5th of every month, and have lots of exciting teaching tips, freebies and resources to share with you. My husband, Eliceo Sanchez and I team up to bring PK-2nd grade teachers quality bilingual freebies and resources through our store called "NICOLE & ELICEO" on Teachers Pay Teachers. Eliceo will also be blogging on the 23rd of each month, so you can get to know him better then.

MY TEACHING EXPERIENCE 
I have a B.S. in Teaching K-12 English Learners and a M.ed. with a focus on "Differentiated Instruction." I have taught K-12 English Learners for the past 14 years and absolutely love it. I have worked in both public and private schools in both suburbs and large urban areas. During my teaching career I attended the "Understanding by Design Academy" in California which lead to my leadership role in curriculum development at various schools. I am currently a curriculum designer and translation coordinator for a large urban school district, do volunteer teaching, and reside in Yucatan, Mexico. 

 MY TEACHING STYLE
My teaching style is laser-focused, and involves differentiated instruction with an emphasis on interactive learning and academic language production. My theory is that those who do the talking, do the learning, therefore it should be the voices of my students that I hear most often. I recently co-authored a book called "INTENTIONAL INTERACTION" with my colleague Lynn Harper, that helps put these ideas into action to support students' learning of both language and content. 

BILINGUAL BLOG HOP
I hope you are enjoying the BILINGUAL BLOG HOP that's happening right now. Each of my participating colleagues are giving away an awesome bilingual freebie during the hop, plus most are also having a SALE to celebrate through Sunday, July 6th.


OUR FREEBIES
We always have a large selection of PK-2nd Grade freebies in our TpT shop. Some are "forever freebies," while others are available for a limited time only. You can FOLLOW US by clicking on the "Follow Me" link on the top of our store to make sure you never miss out on a new freebie. 

OUR GIVEAWAY
To celebrate 4th of July, Eliceo and I are also giving away $25 to two lucky winners to spend in our TpT store. You can enter below.

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As always, happy teaching!