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Lesson Plans and Activities for Teaching Spanish

There are many, many reasons why having a prepared Spanish lesson plan is of utmost importance. Here are some of them: 

While Spanish textbooks are definitely a helpful resource no matter what level of Spanish you teach, at some point, doing the same thing every class can become repetitive to your students and make them less interested in learning the subject. For this reason, it’s important to find ways to diversify your lessons and make them engaging while still covering the material. 

Worksheets, as well as other fun activities for Spanish class, such as singing Spanish songs or creating a PowerPoint presentation to explore areas and topics that interest your students, can help you greatly. Plus, planning to include tech tools and games can be much more motivating and engaging for your students too.

Also, let’s not forget that practice makes perfect, and the number of exercises a textbook provides is limited. Once you finish going through all of them, using additional resources, such as fun worksheets, can help solidify the knowledge your students already gained, as well as teach them how to use the skills they learned in practice. 

Not to mention that there might be students in your class who are slightly more advanced than others but still not advanced enough to be placed in a higher-level group. With additional teaching aids, you can differentiate your teaching within your class to help each of them improve at their own pace, or let them gain knowledge of concepts you wouldn’t touch upon with the rest of the class.

Depending on whether you’re teaching beginners or more advanced groups, the materials you provide them with will differ significantly - mainly due to the fact that in the first case, you need to explain everything from scratch and in more detail than you would with a more advanced class that already has at least partial knowledge of the subject. 

Here are some examples of topics you will most likely cover with specific groups of students: 

Beginners

When it comes to Spanish lesson plans for beginners, some of the most common topics you can cover include the alphabet, basic greetings, days of the week and months of the year, colors, food, etc. You can also teach them how to talk about the weather or their daily routine, as well as the basic tenses they will need to communicate.

Intermediate

With intermediate students, you can cover everything included for beginners, adding some more advanced vocabulary, as well as dive into more complex grammatical structures, past tenses, irregular verbs, conditional sentences, and so on. You can also introduce writing exercises such as writing an email to a friend or a short description of a picture. 

Advanced

With advanced groups, you can focus on developing their speaking skills so that they are able to freely express themselves and talk about topics that interest them. You can also teach them how to write longer pieces of writing, such as essays or articles.

Teaching Spanish to beginners looks slightly different from teaching more advanced groups. For most beginners, it is going to be their first encounter with the language you’re teaching, which is why it’s important that you convey information in a way that will make them interested in gaining even more knowledge on the subject. 

Here are some tips that someone teaching beginners might find useful: 

Use Appropriate Materials

While Spanish materials for beginner and intermediate groups might focus on the same subject (for example, daily routine), they are structured differently, with the ones focused on beginners addressing more basic concepts. 

If you take a look at beginner Spanish lesson plans and compare them with lesson plans for teaching Spanish to those who already have a few years of learning behind them, you will notice the differences, as they’re quite notable despite regarding the same topics. 

Teach Them Things They Will Find Useful

This is especially important when it comes to teaching adults, who might have different reasons for learning the language than the students who are still in elementary or middle school. 

During your first class, ask them what their goal is - some might want to learn the language to move to a Spanish-speaking country, others for business, while the rest might have completely different reasons. Knowing them can help you come up with lesson ideas that will be beneficial to all participants. (Within our Speaking Latino Spanish Teachers community we even include a beginning-of-the-year student survey to help you discover your students’ interests).

Focus on Frequently Used Words

This will typically include verbs such as estar or ser (to be), tener (to have), querer (to want), gustar (to like), or hacer (to do). For example, hacer can be used to talk about doing something (e.g. Hago la cama - I’m making the bed) but also when talking about the weather (Hace frío - It’s cold). 

Make Your Classes Fun

This applies to any level but is especially useful for beginners, as they learn more this way. Utilize all the means available to you, including speaking activities, worksheets, or music. By creating an account on our page, you gain access to not only free Spanish lesson plans for beginners but also several other fun activities you can do with your students and a list of almost 600 Spanish songs for learning the language. 

Accuracy Is Important, But Not the Most Important

Many Spanish teachers make the mistake of focusing too much on the sentence being flawless - however, that’s not always going to be the case, and mistakes are normal, especially when it comes to beginners who are just starting their journey with the language. 

That’s why it’s more important to focus on your students being able to get their ideas across - mistakes can always be corrected.