12 Spanish Presentations to Introduce Vocabulary to Beginners in Your Classroom

Presentations are amazing teaching resources! We can’t deny it.

No matter your students’ learning style and no matter how much we try to incorporate the use of all the senses in our lessons, having a visual aid that keeps the students’ attention can really improve your instruction.

And let’s be honest, no other class will benefit more from visual aids than a language class full of beginners—especially when introducing vocabulary.

So check out these 12 pre-made presentations that you use in your classes!

Contents

• What to Remember When Using These Presentations
• 12 Spanish Presentations to Use in Your Classroom 
• • 1. El clima/tiempo (The weather)
  • 2. Los animales (Animals)
  • 3. La familia (The family)
  • 4. Los colores (The colors)
  • 5. Las partes del cuerpo (Parts of the body)
  • 6. La cabeza (The head)
  • 7. Descripciones físicas (Physical descriptions)
  • 8. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — o’clock)
  • 9. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — quarter past, quarter to, half past)
  • 10. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — remaining times)
  • 11. La rutina diaria (Daily routine)
  • 12. Los cuartos de la casa (The rooms of the house)
• The Power of Slides for Spanish Classes

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

What to Remember When Using These Presentations

Why reinvent the wheel? Here are 12 presentations already put together that you’re free to adapt to your lessons. If you don’t like a particular slide, just delete it or change it!

Most of these presentations come from a site called ¡Oye!, except for El clima, which comes from a site called Tpduggan. Both sites were created by teachers as resources for other educators.

To access the PowerPoints, click on the Spanish headings. You’ll be directed to the website where you can search for the title of the presentation. You can then choose and download the appropriate file.

You have several useful presentations to choose from, so let me give you a couple of notes before we start:

• ¡Oye! is a site that has presentations and exercises for each learning skill, divided into topics and school years. Many of the exercises can be used with an interactive whiteboard, although they also have a printed version. In order to use this site and download the presentations between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. during the week, you need to be registered and pay a monthly fee. The rest of the time, access to the site is free. Keep this in mind when you’re preparing your lesson.
• Tpduggan is exclusively a site that collects PowerPoint presentations of all kinds: vocabulary, grammar, geography, exercises, etc. However, use them with caution because they use English a lot and have lots and lots of text. On the other hand, you can find lots of inspiration and ideas for creating your own presentations.
• Most of these presentations use drawings instead of pictures. Even though this may seem more appealing to children, it doesn’t mean older students or adults will mind them. However, you can always edit the presentations and change the pictures to something you consider more suitable for your class. After all, no one knows your students’ interests and needs better than you.

12 Spanish Presentations to Use in Your Classroom 

1. El clima/tiempo (The weather)

Description: This presentation teaches the names of the seasons and weather expressions that go with them. It’s perfect for introducing the vocabulary for the first time or reviewing it. Since all the pictures are drawings, it may be more appealing to younger children. If you feel real pictures may be better for older students, you can always edit the presentation and change the pictures.

Suggestions: One thing I do recommend you change is the first slide, ¿Qué tiempo hace? (What’s the weather like?), because beginners may get confused and think this is how we ask about the seasons. I’d change it to Las estaciones del año (The seasons of the year) or ¿Qué estación del año es? (What is the season?).

2. Los animales (Animals)

Description: This one contains vocabulary for animals (with drawings) and is under the section and title of “Pets.” It goes beyond the word and the picture and introduces structures to ask questions.

For example:

¿Es un gato? (Is it a cat?)

¡No! (No!)

¿Qué es? (What is it?)

¡Es un perro! (No! It’s a dog!)

In addition to that, it has animal sounds in the drill at the end—a definite plus and more fun for your students.

Suggestions: You can always change the drawings to real pictures or add more animals and questions according to your lesson or students.

3. La familia (The family)

Description: The presentation introduces the family members through an example of a family tree. It introduces new vocabulary while at the same time introducing basic sentence structures for discussing relationships.

For example:

Alicia es la madre de María. (Alicia is María’s mother.)

Luis es el hijo de Alicia. (Luis is Alicia’s son.)

Suggestions: My only suggestion here would be to ask your students to copy the family tree in their notebooks before you get to the true/false drill that tests their knowledge. Otherwise, they’ll be too focused on remembering who was who to remember the relationship between them. Let’s make it simple for them!

4. Los colores (The colors)

Description: This presentation introduces the colors. In the first slides, your students will learn how to ask ¿Qué color es? (What color is it?) and learn the correct term for each color. You’ll just need to edit a small mistake here: the word marrón (brown) is missing the accent.

In the last slides, your students will have to tell you which color results from the combination of two given colors.

For example:

negro + blanco = gris (black + white = gray)

Suggestions: This last part makes the color introduction a little more interesting since they’ll also have to think about color theory. They’ll love the fact that they’ll get drums as an anticipation sound before giving the answer and applause after giving the correct one. Make sure your computer has the sound on and the volume up.

5. Las partes del cuerpo (Parts of the body)

Description: This one introduces and reviews the main parts of the body through a drawing of a girl. In the first slide, the body will slowly form part by part with each click, and you’ll see the name of the body part along with its proper article. The slides that follow are drills to review what students have learned.

Suggestions: In the first drill, students name the parts of the body that the arrows are pointing to and the answers are revealed with each click. The words are written on the slide to help students remember the correct spelling.

The final drill looks like a puzzle with random parts appearing. If you want to test their memory and spice it up a little bit, you can speed up how fast they appear.

The words won’t appear in this drill, just each part of the body. Because of that, another thing you can do to see if they remember the spelling of each word is to ask them to write down the name of each part as it appears (with their notes closed, of course).

Before this last drill, you have one slide that says: “Name the parts of the body as they appear on the screen.” My suggestion is to erase this English sentence. There’s no need for translated words in a language class, it’ll just distract them from the Spanish words.

6. La cabeza (The head)

Description: With a similar structure to the previous presentation, the head is formed part by part with each click and the name appears with its article. Afterward, there are a couple of practice drills to review them.

The drills also follow the same structure as with the presentation of the body. In the first drill, the parts of the face are indicated with arrows and the answer appears. In the second drill, the parts randomly appear without names.

Suggestions: Review them in the same way I suggested for the body. 

7. Descripciones físicas (Physical descriptions)

Description: This presentation focuses on the description of the eyes and the hair. Your students will be able to answer the following questions:

¿De qué color son tus ojos? (What color are your eyes?)

¿Cómo es tu pelo? (What does your hair look like?)

They’ll also be given the proper vocabulary to answer:

Corto, largo, rizado, liso, rubio, pelirrojo (short, long, curly, straight, blond, red)

The first few slides are descriptions of different characters (in drawings) and the last ones are drills that ask your students to describe or answer specific questions about what other characters look like.

The task on the last slide is to draw a character according to the description. Because this last exercise can be really fun for them, you may want to consider adding a few more descriptions. Your students can then draw and compare their pictures.

Suggestions: One thing to consider: before you use this presentation in class, make sure you already taught them noun and adjective agreement. 

And one small piece of advice. In this presentation, they’re referring to straight hair as liso but you could use the opportunity to teach your students about the language variations according to the place in which it is used. Many countries use lacio instead of liso when referring to straight hair. Here is a very interesting discussion on the topic. Hope it helps!

8. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — o’clock)

Description: The structures of all these presentations that have to do with time are quite similar: first there are examples on how to tell time, then there’s a drill where examples are mixed up for your students to practice. At the end, there’s the opportunity to add hands to the clock.

This first presentation shows students how to tell time to the hour, plus noon and midnight. You may need to add en punto (o’clock; sharp) to each slide or just write it on the board to emphasize that it’s another way to say it.

9. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — quarter past, quarter to, half past)

Description: This one shows students how to say y cuarto (quarter past), menos cuarto (quarter to) and y media (half past). 

The hands of the clock aren’t always very clear, so you can either try to edit them or clarify to your students where the hands are supposed to be exactly.

10. Qué hora es? (Telling the time — remaining times)

Description: Students will learn how to tell times that are not on the hour, quarter-hour or half-hour.

I spotted an error that you’ll have to correct: on the eighth slide, instead of being la una y veinticinco (1:25) it actually shows la una y veinte (1:20), so make sure to edit it.

11. La rutina diaria (Daily routine)

Description: This one shows a basic daily routine, as its name states. You should present it after teaching your students how to tell time since the last part of this presentation combines the activities of the routine with the time at which they happen.

At the end, you have the same activities and a clock next to each one that tells the exact time those activities happen. This allows them to practice the new daily routine vocabulary, telling time and the conjugation of the verbs.

Suggestions: The first part is the introduction of some basic activities such as despertarse (waking up), levantarse (getting up), vestirse (getting dressed), etc. They’re all in first person, but if you’ve already taught students the verbs in the present tense, ask students to conjugate the verbs in the third person.

So, one example shows a boy having breakfast with the slide saying Desayuno (I’m having breakfast). You’ll ask your students, “¿Qué hace él?” (What is he doing?) They’ll then conjugate the verb correctly by telling you, “Desayuna.” (He’s having breakfast.)

Also, when combining the pictures with the times on the 13th slide, the second example may be confusing since the clock looks like it says siete menos veinte (6:40) instead of ocho menos veinte (7:40), so you may want to edit this one.

12. Los cuartos de la casa (The rooms of the house)

Description: The first part introduces each room. This will be drilled on the 12th and 13th slides. But on the 11th slide, you have pictures of objects (without their label) that you’ll find in these rooms like a bed, chair, lamp, etc. The question on this slide is ¿En qué habitación se encuentra…? (In which room is …?)

Suggestions: The goal is to practice the name of the room where these objects are, but since they have no label and your students probably won’t know their names, I suggest you print out the pictures of those objects with their names and distribute them randomly to your students before the lesson (or before the presentation).

Once you reach this slide, you can ask the student that has each object to either say the name, show the card or write it on the board to teach their classmates. This way you’re adding an interactive element in the middle of your presentation.

I’d also suggest you change the title to Los cuartos de la casa or add the article to En casa (at home) so that it becomes En la casa.

Another suggestion would be to either eliminate the last slide of the presentation or at least erase the English translation. I’d just keep the slide’s title ¿Cómo es tu casa? (What is your house like?) to encourage them to describe their own house (how many rooms, which floor they are on, etc.), but in the presentation, it’s unnecessary to have so much text. Just list any necessary vocabulary on the board.

The Power of Slides for Spanish Classes

Even though it’s been on the market for almost 30 years, PowerPoint is still a favorite when it comes to presentations.

It allows you to show pictures, graphics, charts and diagrams, or embed videos, songs and sounds. The possibilities are endless!

How about taking your students on a virtual tour with a photo presentation? Or teaching comparatives and superlatives through a set of slides of something your students can compare? Create a comic book, maybe? Or show them a sequence of events and encourage them to predict what will happen next when you’re teaching the future tense?

Even though it takes some time to create them, they’ll work for you for a very long time. You can easily adapt them to your lesson or to your students’ needs. If you prefer to create your own presentations, you can find plenty of tips and tricks online to make them awesome. 

But don’t worry if you just don’t have the time. The internet has a ton of websites where teachers share their presentations and are free for you to download and use in your classroom. And you can still modify them to add your personal touch.

Now, I’m going to be brutally honest with you. In the world of Spanish presentations, finding good presentations to introduce vocabulary to beginners is not easy.

Here are some of the main problems I’ve encountered with Spanish presentations:

• The use of English to explain Spanish. These presentations may be appropriate for teachers but not for the students. We want them to get used to Spanish, and bombarding them with information in English won’t allow them to immerse themselves in the language we’re trying to teach.
• Lots of text. In any kind of presentation, this decreases the attention of the students and, therefore, the effectiveness of the message; either they listen to you or they read the presentation. But in a language class where you’re presenting new vocabulary, having lots of extra words is even worse.
• Not an absolute necessity. It’s important that you set your learning goals before you decide to use them and not the other way around. It’s important to be purposeful with PowerPoints and make sure it’s not the only way you introduce new vocabulary—the novelty will wear off and your students will get bored.

An ideal PowerPoint presentation for teaching vocabulary must be clear, concise, without paragraphs and with lots and lots of pictures—even more so when you are introducing words to beginners. And most importantly, they should only be in Spanish.

You want your students to associate the new word with an image (and maybe a sound), and you want them to remember it in Spanish.

Speaking of images and sounds, you may find great use in some of the fantastic learning material found on FluentU. With FluentU’s diverse and growing library of authentic content, students learn and live Spanish in an immersive fashion.

FluentU works for you as the educator as well! FluentU’s integrated teaching tools make it simple to monitor your students’ progress as they complete exercises and review the newly learned material. You’re sure to find content that can work wonderfully as a basis for PowerPoint presentations.

I hope you enjoy these resources and ideas for many (school) years to come.

And if at some point you decide to spend some time creating your own presentations, please share them online so you can help other teachers the same way they’re helping you now!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)