Theme: Winter/Invierno
This is a mini-lesson focused on a bilingual reading activity. The theme will be learning about Winter.
Esta mini-lección se enfoca en una actividad de lectura bilingue. El tema será aprender sobre el Invierno.
None of the links included are affiliate links. Ningúno de los enlaces incluidos son enlaces de afiliación.
Before winter is over, let’s explore and learn more about the season. This post will inspire you to create your own winter wonderland. Let’s get started!
Antes de que termine el invierno, vamos a explorar y aprender más sobre la temporada. Este artículo te inspirará a crear tu propio maravilloso mundo invernal. ¡Empecemos!
Learning About Winter – Aprendiendo sobre el invierno
Objective/Objetivo:
The objective of this mini-lesson is to learn about the winter season and create our own winter diorama. El objetivo de esta mini-lección es aprender sobre la temporada de invierno y crear nuestro propio diorama de invierno.
Focus Listening Skill/Destreza Auditiva:
- Listening for Cognates / Cognados (English/Español)
Theme/Tema: Winter / Invierno
Activity/Actividad:
- We will listen as the narrator reads the story “The Snowy Day” in English twice and then in Spanish twice. (You can read the stories as many times as you’d like!¡Puedes leer el cuento todas las veces que quieras¡)
- With every reading, we’ll be paying close attention to all the words that might sound similar in both languages.
- We’ll then have a chance to browse the books by ourselves, to look for the words that look similar. (Each child or a scribe might jot down the words on a piece of paper or notebook.)
- Together, we’ll repeat and count all the words we could find. If we have a chalkboard or whiteboard we could create a table with two columns, one for each language, and write the cognates we found there.
- We’ll take out or distribute the materials to create our own winter diorama, and add labels with the cognates we found to our model.
Book/Libro:
- The Snowy Day (English)
- Un día de nieve (Español)
Vocabulary/Vocabulario:
Winter – Invierno – Snow – Nieve (and all others they come up with!)
- Angels / ángeles, mountain / montaña, adventures / aventuras
- Perfect/ perfecto, imagined / imaginó
Materials/Materiales: Recycled shoe box, recycled paper, white paper, construction paper, pen, markers, colored pencils, playdough, scissors, glue, or tape. Small toys or accessories if you have them.
Strategy/Estrategia: These are the steps we are going to follow to complete the mini-lesson and achieve its objective. This mini-lesson can be broken down into three parts:
(When planning any lesson or activity I like to use the format of “before, during, and after” so that’s what we are going to use for this and all other mini-lessons).
Before/Antes:
Gather to read the book that we chose for the activity: “The Snowy Day / Un día de nieve“.
Reunirse a leer el libro “Un dia de nieve”.
Ask “discovery” questions to get an idea of previous knowledge about the subject, and encourage children to share their experiences and questions. I like to use a KWL chart to guide this process.
Realizar preguntas de “descubrimiento”para tener una idea de conocimiento previo que tengan sobre el tema, y animarlos a que compartan sus experiencias y preguntas.
Read the full story in English or Spanish and ask children to pay close attention. Ask follow-up questions to assess comprehension. Ask the children for their first impressions of the story. Read the story again in the other language and remind children to pay close attention to the words that sound similar to the ones they heard before, either in English or in Spanish.
Leer el cuento completo en uno de los dos idiomas y pedir que presten mucha atención. Leer el cuento nuevamente en el otro idioma y recordarles prestar atención a las palabras que suenan similar a las que escucharon en el otro idioma.
During/Mientras:
Now that we are fully immersed in our theme, and we all know the focus of our time together, let’s explore the texts closely to spot the cognates. Jot down any words that are found to be similar, or ask one of the children to serve as a scribe for the group. You may use a notebook, writing pad, or whiteboard to create a table chart with two columns to add the words under the respective language. (Here’s a free template). Leave the chart visible.
Vamos a explorer de cerca los textos para encontrar los cognados!
Pull out and distribute the materials, and introduce the activity: “Our Winter Wonderland”
Saca y distribuye los materiales e introduce la actividad: “Nuestro Maravilloso Mundo de Nieve.”
Here are some ideas you might want to use for inspiration to guide children to create their own. You can download these free resources from TPT.
Aquí algunas ideas que puedes usar para inspirarción!
(I’ve used many free and paid resources from that platform. It’s a great way to support the work of other teachers!)
These are the diorama templates I found that fit this mini-lesson perfectly: (Both options are free to download)
These are examples of diorama projects that could serve as inspiration: (Both options are free to download)
After/Después:
Once we’ve created our winter dioramas, we can go back to our cognates chart and pick the words we want to include in our diorama, as labels. As we do this we can study the words closely and use a marker to highlight the parts of the words that are the same!
Una vez hemos creado nuestros dioramas de invierno, podemos regresar a nuestra tabla de cognados y escoger las palabras que queremos incluir en nuestro diorama, como letreros. Mientras lo hacemos, podemos estudiar las palabras al detalle!
We’ll read our selected book for this activity again, and practice saying together all the cognates in each language out loud! We could point to the word on the chart to help children know which word to say next.
Leeremos nuestro libro seleccionado para esta actividad, y practicaremos decir juntos todos los cognados en cada idioma en voz alta!.
The final step will be to show our diorama to the group and share the cognates we chose from the story. If we have a larger group of children and a bigger box we could do this as a collective activity 🙂
El último paso será mostrar nuestro diorama al resto del grupo y compartir los cognados que escogimos del cuento.
Follow-up activity: as part of our family reading ritual, we could spotlight the selected book in English and Spanish for that week. This way the books, the story, and the new words will stay top of mind, and both books can be manipulated, browsed, and explored by the children as many times as they want.
I hope you enjoyed and found inspiration in this mini-lesson. Espero que hayas disfrutado y encontrado inspiración en esta mini-lección.
The Little Bookstore 
Leave a comment