Welcome!
Welcome back to my podcast teaching la vida loca for season two. I'm Annabelle, your Maestra loca, and I am ready to kick off season two with even more enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. Get set for a ride of inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I am thrilled you're tuning in, buckle up. And let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together. Welcome to Episode Nine of teaching Vida Loca. I'm so glad you're here. Happy, Happy, Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. I am so grateful that you're listening in. If it is still a Teacher Appreciation Week, which is officially May 6 through 10th, I hope that you are lavishing your week, and taking time to recognize your own superhuman, super teacher abilities and all that you do throughout the year. Because even when you're just doing your best and your best is sitting and playing games with kids all day, or putting on a movie, your best is enough at all times. Just keep that in mind. So, hope you are enjoying your week. For me, this week is a leap testing week. I'm recording this the Sunday before Teacher Appreciation Week. And I have to say that leap week is my least favorite time of the year. I cannot stand state standardized testing. I know most teachers agree with me. It's just really grueling. I'm also 38 weeks pregnant and over it and really just wishing I could be out on bedrest. But also, knowing that I don't want to wish my baby early just to be out of work. I know the baby needs to come when baby is ready. So, I'm dreading leap week. We celebrated our Teacher Appreciation Week, a week early at my school. But I still celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week the week of teacher appreciation. So, if you want some ideas for Teacher Appreciation Week, please go back and listen to the episode before this, I give you 10 different ideas of ways to spread joy and gratitude throughout your building. Many of them are free and super easy, and they will feel great. But I hope that you are enjoying your week. Today, I want to give us some new brain breaks because it's been a while. And I don't know that I've ever done an episode just about brain breaks. Are you ready? Is it time for a brain break?
Brain Breaks
I feel like I can't do a whole episode on brain breaks and not include our brain breaks song right? I'll do the outro at the end, I guess I don't know. I mean, the whole episode is about brain breaks. The first one is one I got inspiration from Instagram. Oh, I shouldn't say this. None of these are brain breaks I have blogged about yet. Y’all, I have a list. I don't even want to tell you how long of brain breaks that I have yet to blog about. I think I have maybe 35 brain breaks on my blog. But I have a poster in my room of 200 brain breaks. So, and it keeps growing. But all the five that I'm sharing with you today, yes five, have not been blogged about yet. So, I hope you enjoy. The first one I got inspiration from Instagram for and anytime I find one on Instagram, I like to show the actual Instagram video to students for buy in. If you want to learn more about that, then go and listen to episode three of season one of teaching la vida loca and I tell you all about it. But I call it shape up and I got it from an account called "I am Joshua Woodard". And he and his adorable wife are playing this game together, where he holds up an object and she's facing the other way. And then they count or whatever he says to make her turn around. And as soon as she turns around, she has a couple of seconds to form the shape of that object with her body as best she can. And it's hysterical. So, the way I do it in class is I pick random objects. I have all my students stand up because obviously brain breaks. You want your students up and moving. I have them stand up and look the other way. And then I count down from three and then say okay and count down in your target language and then say a word to make your students turn around. And then they look at the object. It might be a stapler. It might be a pair of scissors, it might be a pencil, it might be a pushpin. It's kind of like whatever I have available in class, and when they turn around, they have to form that shape with their body. Now, this is epic because it doesn't take that long. You can do it several rounds in a row. And you can like give random points that mean absolutely nothing. For effort and for creativity, right. So, Brain Breaks are supposed to be like 60 seconds long. Just take a second, give out some points. Another thing I've done to vary this and make it novel is have students pull out robbed random objects from their backpacks. When I taught middle school, that was super fun, I now teach elementary, and they don't bring backpacks with them to my class. So that's something that I missed. But it was really fun in middle school, when they had their backpacks with them, I would say, get something from your backpack, if you have something that would be great. And then people would run objects up to me for this game. And then they would volunteer to be at the front, and I could play with them. And it was super fun. So that's the first one.
Brain Break 2
The next one is something that evolved into a brain break because I didn't have time to get through everybody's and they were frustrated. To intro a novel that we were reading, I had all my students create two truths and a lie about themselves using chat mats and sentence stems. Because there were novices. So, I had them create all these two truths and a lie. And then for the rest of the class, we like read through them, and they had to guess, first who it was about, they only got three guesses. And then I told them who was about and then they had to guess what the truth was and what was the lie, they had a lot of fun, because I also participated. And the next day, the "do now" was about me. And then they asked for the "do now" every day that week to be about me with two truths and a lie, because they were learning a lot about me. And it was super fun. And a lot of great input for them seeing the first person because I was talking about myself. So, in the chat mats were about themselves. So, once we did that, you know, I had like literally 25 kids left that I hadn't read their 2 truths and a lie, and they were really bummed. So, I just paperclip those and I kept them at the front of the room, in order of the classes that I see them and labeled them. So, I see what Guatemala first and then I see Bolivia, Honduras, so I just paperclip them with the class name so I would remember. If you're interested in learning about country class names, I will link that blog for you too, because that's a really good one. It's super for community building. So, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh, my gosh, I'm so pregnant, and I'm sitting and it's so pathetic, that I'm out of breath. Anyways, the fun brain breaks that we've been doing is just every now and then instead of offering them a movement break, I'll say, hey, do y'all want to do two truths and a lie? And they're like, yeah, so I'll say, Okay, everybody stands up. If you think number one is a lie and jump if you think number two is a lie and clap your hands if you think number three is a lie. So, there's ways to incorporate the movement, which is so important, in my opinion for brain breaks, but still get through everybody's two truths and a lie. And so that's been really, really fun. And something that like happened organically. So that's a good one.
Brain Break 3
Okay, the next one, brain break number three, I got from my colleague, Nina, who is wonderful. I love her so much Nina Luzi. And she is a fierce advocate for social justice and teaching social justice in early, early ages and with it within your classroom. And she is the President of our union, and she's just magic anyways. She said during a workshop that she was leading on trauma informed instruction. She said that one of her favorite brain breaks is like 6o second, 90 second ASMR videos on YouTube. And I was like, what? Now, this is different, because for me, and I've already mentioned it once in this episode. I really feel like brain breaks need to be movement, movement. But I do love a good breathing brain break where we're just sitting or a meditation brain break. You know, there's a lot of really intentional, like intentionality around incorporating those sorts of brain breaks. And so, I was like, Okay, I could try this. Well, before I even tried it, my colleague, Michael Gutierrez tried it. And he's like, I freaking love it. It's great. So, I've been doing this occasionally. But I'll link a couple for you. They're just like short 60 second ASMR videos, if you are not into ASMR you probably won't love this. But it's just like weird sounds and satisfying videos of slime, whatever it is, for 60 seconds and the kids just watch it. I encourage them to breathe while they're watching it. It's usually not breathing. It's usually like them talking like oh wow but it is a total brain break, it's a total break from what we are doing. This is one that isn't necessarily target language. But it's okay for some of them to not be target language focus, because again, it's a break in the rigor of the class. So that is number three.
Brain Break 4
Number four is, oh, my god, y'all. Number four is magic in pre-K. And I would imagine it's magic in kindergarten and first as well, maybe even second, I don't know. I am teaching pre-K this year. And I have a colleague named Steve Kennedy, who is actually in the running for Teacher of the Year in the state of Louisiana, not like, Music Teacher of the Year, not like, for a division, like actual teacher of the year. He is our music teacher in the building. And he is one of the most incredible educators I have ever met in my life. And he's magic. And he, one day I came in, because we trade classes on Fridays, I'm sorry, my dog is going nuts again. We trade classes on Fridays. So, when I am stepping into a pre-K class, he's stepping out of it and going into the one that I just came from. And I came into this class. And he was like, oh, be careful. It's the silent game. And I was like, what is the silent game? Tell me your magic. And I watched as the next five minutes, he left class, the kids didn't even know I was there. And they played this silent game as pre-K students, four-year-olds. All he does is before he leaves the room, it's magic. Before he leaves the room, he picks one student who is sitting crisscross on the rug, who has caught a bubble in their mouth so they're silent, and they're facing forward their hands or to themselves. He picks them and he gently taps them on the head. They stand up and they pick somebody else and gently tap them on the head. But they have to pick somebody else who is Criss Cross applesauce, ready and listening. And I swear these kids love it. And it doesn't matter that I do it every freaking day, every freaking day at the end of Spanish class, when I'm leaving to leave to go out of the room. In order for the enrichment teacher to come into a calm and quiet class. I literally just say, are we ready for the silent game? They go nuts. They're like, Oh, and they're so cute. They immediately cross their legs. If they weren't before. They catch these little bubbles in their mouth. They do these quiet silent coyote things. Oh my god, it's the best thing ever silent game. Thank you, Steve Kennedy, you are the best. And I don't know maybe it'll work with older kids. I've never tried it with my fourth and fifth graders. But I'm telling you it is magic with littles.
Brain Break 5
Okay, the last one. I am so stoked on because I just introduced it two weeks ago. And I was inspired by my son's capoeira class. My son is new to capoeira. He turned five in February, and we got to start going to these capoeira classes. My colleague, my new colleague this year that I mentioned earlier, Michael Gutierrez, he has done capoeira for years and he's like, it's like crazy to watch him and what he can do. But he helps coach and train these littles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He's a volunteer, and he was like, you know, Memphis might like it, you should come one day. So, I said, well, yeah, we'll try it. Memphis is obsessed. And it's so magic because he sings the songs all the time at home. It's like the perfect combination of movement in dance and music and singing. And it's just so joyful. So, they play so many games that could easily be turned into brain breaks. But the one that I was like, I have to try that as a break in class is this one where students are facing the mirror and facing the instructor. And the instructor yells out commands in Portuguese because the whole class is in Portuguese the whole time. And the students have to jump and face backwards, and forwards based on those commands. They also have to touch their head and hold a pumpkin in front of them or imagine holding a pumpkin in front of them as one of the commands, but they also have to match that with while they're jumping forward and backwards. So, they're either facing the front of the classroom or the back of the classroom. And so instead of Portuguese, I'm doing it in Spanish and the students are turning and jumping, and then randomly I'll throw in a cabeza, head, or calabaza which is pumpkin. The trick part the tricky part is cabeza and calabaza are very similar, so they have to really listen for them. They have to really be listening for whether I'm saying forward or back. So, elimination is super fun on this one. Normally I don't love elimination brain breaks, especially when I was teaching high school because students were just looking for a reason to sit down. But they love this game. They want to stay standing for it. So, what I ended up doing is after 20 seconds, I say if you're out you get back in and I invite people to come back in. But if they turn back around to the front, their hands still have to be touching their head. And then if I say head, their hands are still touching their head until they hear me say calabaza. And then that's pumpkin. So, they're holding, they're pretending to hold a pumpkin in front of them. With my fifth graders last week, I added in left and right. And it is created chaos, like a whole other layer, especially because they're like, Wait, is it like looking to the left when I was facing backwards or if I were facing front, so that we decided in order, the only way for me to tell whether it's right or wrong is if we always keep left, like left as if you were facing the front and right as if you were facing the front. So that's how we're doing. But super, super fun brain breaks.
Thank You!
I hope you love these. Remember, it is never too late in the year to start brain breaks. If you have never tried a brain break, pick one of these five, and just try it. Brain Breaks are so joyful. It's so fun, you need to remember that your students do not move enough during their day. It doesn't even matter if you have elementary and they have two recesses, they're still not moving enough in your day. And if you have high school than you know, they are sedentary the majority of their day, giving them the chance to move and be active and find joy in your classroom in a way that is not directly linked to the acquisition that you are helping them. Like the language acquisition that you're facilitating. It's incredible for community building, it's incredible for building that sense of joy and like connection in the classroom. It's the best thing ever. It is the one thing that time and time again, I get emailed constantly from people saying, hey, I just wanted to thank you for the brain breaks. I just wanted to thank you for pushing me to try these. It's completely transformed my classroom and my own joy in the classroom. Because what's key to this is you involving yourself in them too, because it really is a joyful experience to do with your students. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. I hope you enjoyed this, please pass it on to somebody who might be looking for some new novel brain breaks in their classroom. And I promise soon I will be blogging about them and doing some videos online or on YouTube or Instagram of them as well. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this, pass it along to somebody and if you have an extra 30 seconds, go ahead, and click the link in the show notes to write me a review on Apple podcasts would be ever so grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and until next time, I'll be teaching la vida loca. I'm sure you will be too. Take your teacher. Bye bye.
