8 End of Year Spanish Activities
For some of you, this whirlwind of a year is finally wrapping up. And for the rest of you, there’s still a month to go. The end of the year gets pretty crazy during a normal school year, but here we are in the year to end all years. So I’m sure you’re pulling your hair out trying to come up with a few more end-of-year Spanish activities that can be completed digitally and at home.
Also, I think it’s important to honor the switch to virtual learning this year and make sure we don’t just sweep it under the rug. So I do want to share a free download for your students to reflect on the school year. But I’ll explain more about that freebie below.
So, in addition to acknowledging the transition to distance learning with your students, let’s jump into my 8 end-of-year Spanish activities.
Picture Scavenger Hunt
Review unit vocabulary by giving students a list of items to find around their house. You determine just how you want to organize the activity. But you can have students check items off a list, take a picture, or draw each item they find.
Additionally, this is a great activity to review house vocabulary. Students can state exactly which room they found their item in.
Sentence Stem:
| Encontré (object) en el/ la (room). | I found ____ in the _____. |
House Vocabulary
| la cocina el baño la sala el garaje el cuarto el pasillo el comedor el lavadero | kitchen bathroom living room garage bedroom hallway dining room laundry room |
Teach a Spanish Skill to Someone Else
Students can teach a parent, sibling, or another classmate something they’ve learned during the year. This can be as simple as teaching Mom or Dad how to count to ten in Spanish. Or as involved as teaching someone how to cook an authentic Hispanic dish.
Students can document their teaching adventures by video or jotting it down.
Sentence Stem:
| Cómo hacer _____. Cómo contar a ______. Cómo decir _____. | How to make____. How to count to______. How to say _____. |
Useful Transition Words:
| Primero Segundo Entonces Luego Después Por último | First Second Then Next/Later After that/ Later Finally |
Compare Your Virtual Classroom with Your Brick & Mortar Classroom
Earlier I mentioned the importance of acknowledging the change this year from in-person to virtual teaching. It’s been a MAJOR shift, and kids (just like us adults) are bound to have opinions about it.
Take the time to ask students what they liked or disliked about their virtual classroom. Not only does it validate what they’ve been feeling, but it also gives them another avenue to practice Spanish. And it might also give you valuable data about what’s working (or not working) in your current setup. Should we be in this position next year, you know what needs changing and what can stay the same.
My download gives students the opportunity to show their distance learning setup, as well as write what they like or don’t like about virtual learning. You can access the free download by following the prompt below.
Create a Timeline (Línea de tiempo)
Students can create a timeline of the school year describing an event, holiday, or skill they learned each month of the school year. This is a great way to review the year’s content, but it also encourages kids to work on the months of the year and the past tense in Spanish.
Students can keep their timelines short and sweet, by adding an image and writing one sentence to explain each event.
You decide if the timeline needs to be about things that happened specifically in Spanish class or if it can be a more general timeline chronicling their lives.
Timelines can be completed using Google Slides by creating one slide per month, with a sentence and image.
Sample Sentence Stems:
| En agosto, empecé primer grado. En septiembre, celebré mi cumpleaños. En octubre, me disfracé de policía para Halloween. | In August, I started first grade. In September, I celebrated my birthday.) In October, I was a police officer for Halloween. |
Useful Spanish Verbs:
| Celebré Aprendí Pasé Descubrí Disfrazarse | I celebrated I learned I spent [time] I discovered I dressed up [in a costume] |
Months of the Year:
*Remind students that months of the year are not capitalized in Spanish*
| enero febrero marzo abril mayo junio | julio agosto septiembre octubre noviembre diciembre |
Class Yearbook
Class yearbooks aren’t a new idea, but they are great to do in Spanish -just for the extra language practice, it gives our kiddos. There are tons of class yearbooks or memory books available on Teachers Pay Teachers similar to the one I have in my store below. Choose whichever one strikes your fancy and add it to your Google Classroom or use it at home with your kids.
Make Your Own Game
Give students the reins to create their own end-of-year Spanish activity. They choose their favorite unit that they’ve learned during the year and develop it into a review game.
Programs like Kahoot!, Factile, or Quizizz are fantastic resources where students can create games online.
ABC Picture Book
Similar to a scavenger hunt, students take a picture, draw, or find clipart of one thing in their house for each letter in the alphabet. Then they compile those images into an ABC picture book. Make sure they use the correct article with each word (el agua, el balón, la casa).
Students can create their book using Google Slides or an app like Book Creator (there’s a free version). And a great online resource is this Little Explorer’s English-Spanish Picture Dictionary.
Want to make this even easier? Instead of individual books, create an ABC picture book as a class by assigning students one or two letters.
Write a Letter to Next Year’s Class
Depending on your kids’ level of Spanish, this can be written in Spanish or English, or simplified to a set number of tips for next year’s class. Students can write to future classmates, a younger sibling, or even to themselves about how to be successful in learning Spanish.
The general idea is that kids are giving advice to future students or their future selves.
I love the idea of a letter, because how often do we write letters? Plus, it’s another source of information that allows you to see what you can continue or implement the following year.
Conclusion
There are tons of end-of-year Spanish activities to keep the creative juices flowing as we close out the school year. I know it’s been absurdly difficult to keep kids learning and growing, but you got this. Next stop, getting through the summer.
Need more ideas? Take a look at Virtual Field Trips to Spain and my 8 No Prep, No-Hassle, At Home Spanish Activities.
