Aimed at groups of SEN children visiting secondary school, these activities will help new starters find their way around and feel happy about their move in September.

A bilingual English girl experiences bullying while living in Spain for the summer. A gentle, enjoyable story about two cultures that includes lots of Spanish words for your class to learn. The children’s friendship issues are resolved by talking, working and playing together. The story is parallel text English Spanish by new author, Natalia Simons and is available from Amazon. https://amzn.to/3pxoIIH Your children will enjoy reading the book and I recommend you buy a copy for your classroom, but you can access this complete lesson before your book arrives. There is a reading of the book available to you on YouTube accompanied by the book artwork and endorsed for use in school by the author. https://youtu.be/drGtlvFntxU In this beautiful cross-curriculum lesson the first sheet, WORDS AND IDEAS, focuses on 7 high-frequency and strong cognate items of vocabulary, followed by discussion questions on the main themes of the story: having two homes and cultures and the difficulties of being different. The second sheet gives children a chance to play with the word RARA, meaning strange, with a focus on rolling the letter r and creating Spanglish sentences using the word RARA. There are then two vocab tests so you can assess children’s understanding and openess to Spanish as a second language. There is no need to teach this vocab if the children have watched the video of the story. The third sheet provides flashcards for 18 key vocab items from the story. You can use these however you like to use flashcards. There is a suggestion for a game of bingo. Make sure you are comfortable with the pronunciation by watching the video https://youtu.be/drGtlvFntxU or play using an excerpt of your choice from the video (if you fancy paying very close attention to the Spanish words that are being used!) The last sheet for students is a vocabulary list of all the Spanish used in the video to present the story. You can challenge the students to re-tell the story using as much of the Spanish vocabulary as possible, or perhaps they can create new stories of their own. It is nice for children to have a choice, after all. Finally, I have included a Spanglish text for teachers, explaining the use of Spanglish as a teaching method. Having tested this text on non-Spanish speaking colleagues, I am confident that you will be able to access this text, whether or not you are already a Spanish speaker. I hope you and your students enjoy the lesson, and I hope that your school buys a copy of THE SPANGLISH GIRL for your classroom. Thank you for looking! I have marked chapters in the video to make it easier for you to navigate in class. By hovering the mouse over the bottom of the video you should find bars to indicate where the chapters start and finish: Intro, Story, Outro.