🪨 The Spanish Rock — still going strong
A few weeks ago I shared how we introduced The Spanish Rock in our class as a way to encourage students to speak Spanish during Spanish time.
And the best part?
✨ We’re still using it. And it keeps getting better.
What I find most interesting is how students are now managing the system almost entirely on their own.
At the beginning I sometimes had to step in to solve small debates:
❓ “Who should get the rock?”
❓ “Was it fair when you passed it?”
But little by little those interventions have almost disappeared.
Now the rock travels from student to student throughout the day, and they manage the whole process themselves from the beginning of the day until the end.
🧠 That’s agency in action.
😂 The system is so effective that I even have to be careful myself.
If I accidentally say something in English during Spanish class — words like brain break or lunch — the students immediately pass the rock to me.
And that means two things:
✍️ I have to write a poem
⭐ And I owe the class a star at the end of the day
📚 But something unexpected is happening.
The rock is not only encouraging students to speak Spanish…It is also turning them into poets 🎭.
Students have written many poems already, some of them truly fantastic. Here are two examples:
🐦 “Pico” — by A****
🇪🇸 Español
“Pajarito bonito”, dice
con sus plumas azules y verdes
pequeño, sí, pero majestuoso
¡y a veces, perezoso!
🇬🇧 English
“Beautiful little bird,” he says
with his blue and green feathers
small, yes, but majestic
and sometimes… lazy!
🪨 “La Roca” — by T****
🇪🇸 Español
Otra vez la roca
Otra vez me toca
Salió inglés de mi boca
Hoy estoy muy loca
🇬🇧 English
Here comes the rock again
And it lands with me again
English slipped out of my mouth
Today I must be a little crazy
🌱 What started as a simple classroom strategy is now doing much more than expected, students are:
🗣️ Speaking Spanish more consistently
✍️ Practicing poetry and literacy
🤝 Managing the system themselves
🧠 Developing ownership and agency
And honestly, every week I’m more convinced that introducing The Spanish Rock was a great decision for our classroom.
✨ Sometimes the simplest ideas create the most powerful learning.
💬 Have you ever used a playful system like this to support language learning in multilingual classrooms?