Outdoor Language Adventures

Hello teachers! It's that time of the year when the weather is beautiful and the kids are bursting with energy, so why not go out and explore while creating the perfect real-world language experience for your students.

I am going to share three engaging lessons with you that are available in my SHOP.  

• ¿Cómo está el clima? unit (currently only available in Spanish)
• La Naturaleza / Nature Hunt (available in Spanish, English and French)
• El Zoológico (currently only available in Spanish)

¿Cómo está el clima?

What's included in this lesson?

~ A Lesson Plan Guide

~ Flash Cards

~ Visual Aids

~ Weather Journal Printables

~ Weather Graphing Templates

Talking about the weather is one of the most common ways to start a conversation with someone ~ so it's a good idea to get your students very familiar with how to do this in Spanish or whichever language you teach.  In my classroom, I incorporate a lot of TPR  and even some sign language when previewing new vocabulary.  Weather is one of those topics that really lends itself to this easily.  The students imitate the motions of the vocabulary while I present them with a visual as well.  

Another tool I LOVE to use is my flannel board.  I have flannel pieces that represent different types of weather as well as the 4 seasons.  A great idea is to actually assimilate weather vocabulary and expressions into your beginning of class routine in order for it to become natural for your students to talk about.

This product that is available on my shop includes a weather journal and weather graphing project.  To turn this into an outdoor adventure, print out the week-long journal for each student and you can take your students outside to experience the weather first-hand.  Look at the sky and ask if there are clouds, if it's sunny, if it's hot/warm/cold etc.  Students will then record their findings for each day of the week.  Bring some crayons or markers so they can sketch it too.  At the end of the week, pass out the graph printable for each student and  graph the results from the journal together.

   Click HERE to preview

                                                                                 

                                              La Naturaleza

What's included in this lesson?

~ Digital / printable flashcards

~ Lesson Plan Guide

~ Vamos a una búsqueda song

~ 2 different Scavenger Hunts

~ Scavenger Hunt Writing Activities

~ Scavenger Hunt Art Activity

Scavenger hunts are a favorite among kids for sure! The ideas are endless! Over the years, I have set-up color scavenger hunts, animal hunts, beach-themed hunts, castle themed treasure hunts, weather themed hunts and tons more.  This particular activity that is available in my shop is a nature hunt.  What better way to learn how to talk about nature than to get out and be in it!  I am very fortunate because my school has an absolutely beautiful campus with fields, woods, trails, themed-equipment and it helps to make these kinds of lessons come to life! Just be creative and remember that if you're excited...they'll be excited too!

                                                El Zoológico

What's included in this lesson?

~ Lesson Plan Guide

~ Flash Cards

~ Word Cards for Word Wall

~ Zoo Animal Cut-outs

~ Zoo adventure check-list

~ Zoo animal vocabulary guides

~ Assessment on the animals

~ Post Zoo adventure writing activities

Now, if you are looking for an unforgettable experience for your students, this is it! This is definitely one of my top-ten favorite lessons that I do with my students!  I'll admit, I go a little over-board on this one, but the great thing about it is it's easy to take the ideas and the printable activities from this and make it your own.  We all have different teaching settings so you can adapt the lesson to something that makes sense and works well for you. I'll break down the steps of how I approach this lesson.

1. Gather some stuffed animals or create cardboard animal cut-outs, or you can print-out and laminate the animal cut-outs available in this product.
   
   
   
             
   
   

   2. Print out the flash cards and word wall to preview the vocabulary.

3. Print out the checklist and name-tags (if you want to make it that elaborate.)

4. Decide which levels you want to use this for.  The nice thing about this lesson is that the activities are differentiated.  There are multiple choices for the check-lists and all of the follow-up activities.

5. Finally- you can print out the assessment and/or writing activities that you'll use after you go on the adventure.

TIP: If you hide the animals, tell the students to call them (in the target language of course) ~ So they repeat the word over a dozen times! :) This works best for the younger ones.  With the older students, the writing activities include follow-up questions and scaffolding techniques to use while you're on the hunt.

So I hope that this blog post brought you some value.  Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end! If you are interested in all three of these lessons, you can get them at a discounted price by purchasing them as a BUNDLE! 

Have an awesome week! ¡Les deseo una excelente semana! Hasta la próxima.