How to Tutor Spanish for K-12
Foreign language classes are now required in most US high schools and are now being offered in more elementary schools. In a country with a fast growing Spanish-speaking population, the need for Spanish tutors is growing as well. With a few tips under your belt you can develop the skills to successfully tutor children of all ages.
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Instructions
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Plan plenty of group activities to get students talking to one another. Activities can be a great fun way to learn and can break up the monotony of structured grammar lessons. Organize a game of bingo or memory so that students can enjoy the learning experience. Your greatest challenge as a tutor will be preventing the students from becoming bored.
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Get the students talking about their personal lives and interests. Assign projects and essays that can engage them both intellectually and emotionally, so that they may enjoy the work. Have students talk about their hobbies, their families and friends and their wants and desires. Instead of giving them rigid topics for their assignments, give them some freedom of choice in deciding what to write about.
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Have movie days to help students practice their listening skills in a way that is interesting to them. Break the movie up into parts, watching half or a third of a movie one day and discussing it the next. As the tutor, you should watch the movie beforehand and organize a list of engaging questions that can help your students to understand the film.
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Engage younger children by tutoring with lots of pictures. Teach the alphabet, as you would to young learners of English, by arranging each letter of the alphabet with a corresponding picture, around the classroom. Young children love to draw and color, so offer assignments that combine creative drawing and written or spoken descriptions of their work in Spanish.
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Teach culture, as well as language, by organizing fun projects for various Latin holidays. There are a number of fun projects available for children during Dia de los Muertos, Cinco de Mayo or Carnivale. Creative holiday projects not only teach language and culture, but can be a fun and engaging event for children to look forward to.
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Read books with your students, or for older and more advanced students, have them read on their own. Just as in English, reading is a key way to learn a language, and a good story line can engage the children mentally, making learning fun.
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