Quick post between meetings because something REALLY COOL just happened:
Several of my Spanish 2 kids had to leave for a cross country meet. Instead of introducing new subject matter to only half the class, I decided to do a review. Of something. Um, what? I had nothing planned.
They begged for a story. I didn't have a script and I didn't really think I'm confident enough to just do a story. Plus, we are working on preterite verbs and talking about the past, because I'm still learning how to not shelter grammar.
I'm new at this!
But what I could do was take a story from another class that I know really, really well and quickly put it in the past tense.
I put the past-tense structures on the board and went for it. We ended up with a usual silly story (a friendly elephant, a shark, and the reasons you don't see leprechauns in Ireland any more) and another easy, fun 30 minutes of Spanish used naturally. I don't even think they realized how much language we just used...And as a bonus, I got to work in some structures (indirect object pronouns, tener + que) that I've been meaning to review with them.
Good day.