Let's Talk About Earth Day in Spanish Class
Looking for ideas to highlight and make an impact beyond Earth Day? It begins with increasing awareness because our students are already very caring beings. However, Earth day is also a very special time to have meaningful conversations in the target language while making an emphasis on SEL skills such as empathy, responsibility, kindness, and thinking beyond our own selves.
Today, I am sharing with you several resources that can be adaptable for any level as the teacher can guide the discussion in a comprehensible way and students can responds using either pictures, lists, sentences, and paragraphs. The choice is all yours! At this time, we must strive to continue to provide effective instruction while working smarter and certainly not harder.
ACTIVITIES & IDEAS FOR ALL LEVELS
1. Let's Highlight What Students Are Already Doing to Take Care of Mother Earth
As in the image above, ask students to brainstorm ways in which they are already taking action to do their part. Depending on the level of the class, host a discussion and ask students to elaborate on their responses. You can access this Jamboard and Google slide templates in the button below with my FREE Earth Day Folder that also contains the resources I shared last year plus many more!
2. Host a School Wide Social Media Campaign
Make it as real as possible for our learners by hosting a social media challenge.
Simply share your image files with your students and have them complete & share these in their Instagram stories. Believe me, they will know exactly what to do.
Invite them to complete a video reflection of the activities they took part on during the challenge.
Visit my Earth Day blog post from last year to check out some completed examples and to read about more #EarthDay #diadelatierra ideas!
3. Authentic Resources Baby!!!
Authentic resources are so powerful and so simple to integrate into any lesson.
In my Earth Day #authres research, I found this amazing site. Check it out!
But that is not all, I have already done some research for you. Last year, I put together a PDF with a variety of authentic resources for you to explore as a class or to assign to your upper level learners as a possible extra credit assignment.
4. CREATE AWARENESS TO CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
There are so many actions we can take to take care of our planet year round, but this week, why not highlight the pollution created by disposable mask? I have a mini lesson on it. It was so engaging and eye opening for many of my students. Check out some of our activities:
GET ALL MENTIONED EARTH DAY FREEBIES HERE!
BONUS IDEAS: Add a Catchy Beat to the Mix
Have you heard the song Madre Tierra (Oye)? I love it for so many reasons:
- It allows for such a powerful Social Emotional Learning integration.
- It features ecotourism and historic sites in Merida, Yucatán, México.
- It carries such love for life that is contagious.
Want to bring this song to the classroom with all these elements? Don’t worry, I got you!
NOT A SPANISH TEACHER?
If you are not, I really wish I could better serve you, and I thought to myself how can I help out the teachers who don’t teach Spanish? I thought I could provide editable templates with English wording suggestions of some the activities so you could easily change it to the language that you teach. I hope you find them useful.
Feeling Pumped to Highlight Earth Day?
I hope all of the Earth Day resources and materials are useful to you in some way shape or form. If you happen to start an online social media campaign, please tag me at @profesoradegladillo via Instagram.