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I have spent the last ten years working daily with Spanish-speaking kids who are learning English. If you speak Spanish, it is easier to connect with Spanish-speaking kids, but many ESL or content teachers do not. So, how can it be done? Let’s delve into it!

1. Respect their names

The first way to connect with your newcomer is to introduce yourself to the student one-on-one and write your name down rather than just saying it to them. Help them to pronounce it as best they can, and then reciprocate.

Let them teach you how to pronounce their name correctly, and take the time to practice and learn it, even if it is difficult for you. Showing them this respect will go a long way in building a meaningful relationship between you.

I firmly believe you should not call Hispanic students by the Americanized version of their name (such as Joseph instead of José) or any other nickname, even if they tell you they’re ok with it. They likely say this because they can tell it’s easier for you and want to appease you.

It is common for children, especially boys, to be the second, third, or fourth in their lineage with the same name. Your Juan Torres could be Juan Torres IV. If you start calling Juan ‘John’, it sends a disrespectful message.

Additionally, in some places, like Puerto Rico, it’s becoming increasingly common for parents to create a new name for their child by merging elements of their own names. Take the time to learn how to pronounce these unique names correctly, or risk inadvertently affronting your students’ parents!

Many Spanish words and names also have accents on certain letters, which shows where emphasis should be placed when pronouncing the word correctly. For example, the name Adrián is pronounced add-ree-AN – the accent causes the last part of the name to be stressed. I’ve taught students who have been adamant about the accents in their names, and rightly so. In Spanish, not including accents is the same as misspelling a word. For further reading, I recommend this New York Times article from 2016, when Major League Baseball (MLB) realized the importance of putting accents on their players’ jerseys.

To sum it up, a student’s name is integral to their identity and has many layers – the least we can do is learn how to say and spell it correctly.

2. Get to know them and their stories.

It’s easy for teachers to forget that not all students know what is expected of them in a school environment.

Some newcomers may have never been to school before, and some students may have had an interrupted education across various schools. Many are years below grade level academically. They don’t know the country, and they don’t know you (yet!).

Whatever your role in a newcomer student’s life, you should show empathy for their situation and be there to help and support them.

Confirm any information you’ve been given from admin with the students themselves – find out their birthday, who they live with, and their home language.

If your student can understand written Spanish and is upper elementary or older, you could use my Newcomer Basics packet, which teaches students how to share this information about themselves in English. Check it out here!

Link to Newcomer Basics: An Intro Packet for Spanish-Speaking ELLs on TPT

Remember to tell your students this information about yourself – share your story with them, too!

3. Celebrate their small victories.

So many of our newcomer students are intelligent and capable. Unfortunately, some teachers assume that a student who doesn’t understand English (and, therefore, doesn’t understand their class) lacks intelligence.

Our newcomers may have had interrupted schooling, may not have a stable home life, and are likely homesick. They could be performing below grade level, but it’s unlikely to be their fault and does not reflect their intelligence or potential.

Newcomer students will need some support and accommodations to get them to where you want them to be, and they are legally entitled to such accommodations. It may take longer than you wish for things to start to ‘click’ for them, but always appreciate the potential these kids have.

Tell them when you see them making improvements, no matter how small. Show them you are proud of them! The more positivity you project onto them, the more confident they will feel, and your bond will strengthen because they will associate you with feeling good about themselves.

4. Do your best to remember their interests – and reciprocate!

Of course, this depends on the number of students you teach, and it’s something you have to work at over time, but it pays off!

Ask to see photos of their pets, find out if they do extracurricular activities, their favorite sports teams, and how their family is doing. Share your life with your students so they can make connections with you.

Where I live, basketball is the most popular sport by far, but where I come from, soccer is king. I have a small number of students in different classes who also love soccer, and we often discuss our favorite players and how our teams are doing. I love having that extra familiarity with them.

Communicating with a language barrier can be awkward, but making the effort is vital. Children are children, and they just want to be liked and loved by their teachers. If you don’t try to get to know them, they won’t feel either of these things.

5. Instigate positive communication with their parents/guardians

Being liked by the student is the first step for good parent relationships.

If you have made a good impression on the student and they go home and tell their parents/guardians that they like you, whatever you have to communicate to the parent will likely be more respected and supported at home.

When providing written feedback to parents, Google Translate is a good start. However, it may not be 100% accurate and can translate some phrases awkwardly, so try to keep your sentences short and precise.

I have heard some educators sing the praises of a free app called TalkingPoints. This app automatically translates all written messages into whichever language the parent chooses and back into English when the parent responds in their native language. I don’t have experience with this app myself, but it does look great, especially as it’s free for teachers.

I recently discovered the AI translator app DeepL. It’s free to download and use, and you can translate text from a photo and spoken language through your phone’s microphone. I have yet to try it extensively, but it looks excellent for both written and spoken translation.

Ultimately, any attempt to communicate positively will likely go down well with parents. They will want to know you are someone who likes their child and wants the best for them.

Focus on positive feedback. If there is a conduct issue, phrase it in a way that appeals to the parent’s support.

Here’s an example:

Even though [student’s name] is working well, I would really appreciate if you could talk to him/her about talking too much during class. They can be distracted and this sometimes affects their understanding. Many thanks for your support!

Aunque [student’s name] está trabajando bien, realmente agradecería si pudieras hablar con él [him] / ella [her] sobre hablar demasiado durante la clase. Puede distraerse y esto a veces afecta su comprensión. ¡Muchas gracias por su apoyo!

Conclusion

I hope these tips help you to make positive connections with your Spanish-speaking newcomer students! Building relationships and trust takes time, but showing your students you are on their team and want the best for them from the beginning will make them more likely to want to do their best for you and themselves.

Until next time, happy teaching!

It’s October 1st, and for many of us, that means Spooky Season is officially here! Halloween fever only builds the further we get into October, and that’s true in the classroom, too. Since most kids love scary stuff (in my experience, anyway!), October is a great time to engage our ELLs with different vocabulary and many more fun and spooky learning opportunities.

Getting into the Halloween Spirit: Discovering What Students Already Know and Like

Some Spanish-speaking countries celebrate Halloween, but the traditions may be different or Americanized. For example, in Puerto Rico, kids sing a short rhyme while collecting candy, including the English words ‘trick or treat’ shortened to ‘tricortri.’ It goes: “Tric-or-tri, Hal-lo-ween, dame dulces, no maní” (give me candy, not peanuts). The combination of candy and spooky things will likely attract most kids’ attention, even if Halloween is not celebrated in their home country. Asking students to share whether a spooky season or day is celebrated in their country or family is a great place to start, especially with newcomers. Here are some questions to get your students talking:

¿Celebras Noche de Brujas en tu familia? Do you celebrate Halloween in your family?

¿Hay alguna tradición de Halloween que te guste hacer? Is there any Halloween tradition that you like to do?

¿Te gustan las películas o los juegos de terror? Do you like scary movies or games?

¿Tienes algún plan para Halloween este año? Do you have any plans for Halloween this year?

If you need help understanding Spanish, you could show your students photos representing different Halloween traditions to point to as they answer the questions. For example, a student may tell you that they have been Trick or Treating and can point at the relevant photo so you can understand. You can then teach them how to say this in English. It’s a great way to build student-led relationships.

Spooky Vocabulary Activities

Vocabulary is the basis of most of the activities I use with my ELLs. With newcomers and those with very little English, I start with flashcards to teach new words, then a conversational board game to practice using them, followed by worksheets and puzzles to apply the new knowledge and translation activities to help make those all-important language connections. More advanced ELLs still benefit from these activities as they may need to learn specific vocabulary relating to, for example, monsters, even if they know a lot of other seasonal vocabulary, such as pumpkins or candy.

To help you, I’ve made this FREE list of Halloween vocabulary! It includes the names of monster characters, other spooky nouns, verbs, and adjectives in English and Spanish to help you set up your activities or just for general conversation with your ELLs.

This list is included in the Halloween Activity Pack for Spanish-speaking ELLsavailable from my TPT store. The pack comes with colorful, ready-made flashcards, ‘I have… Who has…?’ game cards, a Zombie Escape board game, and so much more to engage all the ELL students in your group. There’s something for everyone in this pack, so go and check it out! The flashcards are especially helpful to native Spanish-speakers as they come with a Spanish phonetic pronunciation of the English word, so students can practice independently!

Improving Speaking and Listening

Now that your ELLs have started to learn Halloween-themed vocabulary, the next stage is encouraging them to use these words in context. An excellent place to start is with the card game ‘I have… Who has…?’. My Halloween version includes the same pictures from the flashcards to encourage students to recall the vocabulary words they have been learning. The first player reads aloud a structured sentence from their card, for example, “I have the pumpkin, who has the werewolf?” and the student who has the werewolf would then reply, “I have the werewolf, who has the…?” and the game continues until all the cards have been read. You can make your version of these cards using pictures online or purchase the pack here with everything ready to print and go!

Grammar and Writing Activities

This is where the challenge for your more advanced students comes in. They may be more confident speaking and understanding spoken English but using correct verb tenses and sentence syntax is an area they could always practice more. Give your students some spooky-themed sentences practicing the ‘be’ verb in different tenses or regular/irregular verbs, depending on their grade level and your learning objectives for this quarter. Fill-in-the-blank sentences are a good start, or choosing the correct answer from a selection if your students need more support. The grammar and writing activities in my Halloween pack are all done for you, including a fun ghost train-themed creative writing activity for your most advanced ELLs!

Making Language Connections: Translation Activities

I strongly believe in empowering multilingual students. Yes, they are in my class to learn English, but I always try to make time to strengthen connections between English and Spanish. The ability of my students to speak Spanish is not something I ignore just because I teach English. Many students need help with translation, even if they are near fluency in both languages. It is a skill that will serve them in numerous ways throughout their lives, and fostering it is very important to me as an educator. So, how do I do this? Well, by making it fun! Word search puzzles and color-by-codes where the student has to translate from Spanish to English always go down well with my ELLs, and I’m sure they will with yours, too! Check out the pack here.

But, wait! What about reading comprehension?

I did not forget about reading! Your more advanced students may well be into reading Goosebumps or other classic horror stories by now, but beginner to intermediate readers may need some language support when reading texts. I have included two reading comprehension passages in the Halloween activities pack; one is a cute short story about a young witch and her kitten, and the other is a non-fiction text about where the tradition of Trick or Treating comes from (do you know?). Both come with comprehension questions with either multiple-choice or full-sentence answer options – choose what’s best for your kids.

And there you have it! Spooky, fun, and educational Halloween activities that will help all levels of ELLs in your group to become more confident in every area of English language learning, from newcomers right up to the more advanced.

Happy teaching!

Hello! I’m Lucy, the creator of Lucy Teaches English, the TPT store that provides ESL / TESOL educators with resources to support native Spanish speakers in their classes.

99% of my students are upper elementary and middle school native Spanish speakers. Many can speak English confidently but find reading and writing challenging; others can read and understand English reasonably well but are still not ready to talk that much. Some do not know a single word of English, whereas others are so fluent in all areas of English that I wish I could send them off to high school already!

When so many levels of learners are all in one group, things start to get tricky.

Early on, I realized I would need to find resources to help students practice grade-appropriate English language concepts with Spanish-language support. However, the only ESL resources I could find were in English only and, more often than not, made for kindergarten or lower elementary students.

Immersion is often said to be the most effective approach to mastering a new language. I’ve even heard of some teachers hanging a sign on their wall proclaiming ‘NO SPANISH ALLOWED.’

But this does not sit well with me. If someone were to tell me I am not ‘allowed’ to speak my native language, it would make me feel uncomfortable.

Some students can dive in and pick things up quickly through exposure and repetition, whereas others need a different approach. Providing Spanish-language explanations of English-language concepts ensures all my learners feel included, regardless of their abilities.

Lucy Teaches English resources actually teach and demonstrate through examples rather than simply translating. Every activity or assignment requires the student to apply some element of English. The resources support, explain, and encourage independent use of English, while respecting the student’s native language and burgeoning bilingualism.

The best part is that using your students’ native language means you’re not smothering part of their identity by telling them they can’t use Spanish. Instead, you’re cultivating inclusion, building their confidence, and showing empathy for their language learning journey.

I hope you find value here and will consider stopping by again soon.

Thanks for reading!