Homework for First Year Spanish Ideas

Looking for ideas for homework in your Spanish classes? Need grammar book recommendations? So does everyone else!

I recently received this email from a Spanish-teaching diva named Luisa:

Dear Jalen,

¡Saludos!  I successfully used Spanish 1A, 2009 version, to teach Spanish 1 to a small class of students this past school year.  The class only meets two days per week during the regular school year.  This coming year, I will teach Spanish 1 and Spanish 2.  We will use 1B for Spanish 2.

I have some questions.  Do you have a grammar book that you recommend?  Last year I took excerpts form some I have.  When we did the grammar lessons, I needed much class time to explain, and since we only have the two periods per week, this took away from your program.

  This also leads to my next question-what do you do for homework?  My students had some listening to complete four times a week.  Occasionally they had some grammar practice, but overall had little homework all year.  I’d like to assign them some useful homework.

Thank you!

Luisa K

Here's my response:

Hi Luisa! I like the grammar books I listed in this post:

http://www.waltmania.com/2015/11/grammar-resources-i-like-and-use.html 

As for homework, I wrote homework assignments out the wazoo over the past 8 years because I realized it fit really well with the expectations of the school and parents where I work, and I am now posting all my updated Spanish 1A lesson plans (including homework assignments and much more) on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here is a link to my store:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jalen-Waltman  

If you don't want to or can't buy my updated stuff on TPT, my recommendation for homework is easy grammar exercises that reinforce what they were learning recently, plus make the skits and/or readings into translation exercises (where they have to translate Spanish to English word for word in their own handwriting under the Spanish.) I shorten these reading-translations so they aren't overwhelming (usually) but they also make awesome quiet-down-and-work assignments in class when things get too rowdy for my nerves to handle any more. :-)

Hope this helps!

300+ pages of detailed Spanish 1 lessons for high school with masters ready to copy for your class.