3 Spanish Class Drawing Activities for Middle & High School Students

I love using drawing activities every once in a while in Spanish class because they feel new and different without being confusing.
Once students understand the format after doing the activity once or twice, they can focus on the language instead of trying to figure out directions.

These activities also let students get creative, which I always love. And I feel like drawing activities use a different part of the brain than a lot of traditional language activities.

(Not a brain scientist, so don't quote me on that. 😂)

If you're looking for simple Spanish activities that combine creativity with listening, speaking, reading, or writing practice, here are three of my favorites.

1. Listen and draw

This one is SO simple. You describe something out loud and students draw what they hear. Students listen carefully and add each detail to their drawing.

You can make this as easy or difficult as you want depending on the level you're teaching.

👉 For beginners, you might describe "Juan come un helado. María come una hamburguesa."

👉 For more advanced students, you could describe an entire scene "Hay una lámpara al lado de la cama. La ropa en el piso está sucia. Hay una pizza debajo del escritorio."

One thing I like about this activity is that even students who don't consider themselves artistic will participate. They're not trying to create a masterpiece. They're simply showing comprehension through a drawing.

You can also set this activity up as a partner speaking activity where one partner describes an image that the other partner draws. Give lower-level students sentence starters and vocabulary banks for support.

2. Read and draw

Students read a paragraph and draw exactly what they read. I especially like using this activity with:
💖 messy bedrooms
💖 dream houses
💖 monsters
💖 towns and maps
💖 weird imaginary scenes

For example "La cama está al lado de la ventana. Hay calcetines sucios debajo de la silla. El gato está durmiendo encima de la mesa."

Students must pay attention to:
✔️ location words
✔️ descriptions
✔️ details
✔️ relationships between objects

One of my favorite things about read-and-draw activities is that you can immediately see who understood the reading. If a student places everything correctly, they probably comprehended the text. Which honestly makes checking comprehension WAY easier. 😂

3. Draw first, write second

In this activity, students create something weird, creative, or detailed and then write about it. Some of my favorite prompts are:
✨ create a monster
✨ design a dream house
✨ design a theme park
✨ create a ridiculous outfit

After students finish drawing, they write a description using the target vocabulary and sentence structures you're practicing.

This works really well because students already have ideas in front of them visually. They're not trying to think of content and write in Spanish at the same time. The drawing gives them something concrete to describe, which often leads to stronger writing and more detailed responses.

Drawing activities are one of my favorite ways to change things up without introducing an entirely new activity format.

Students get to be creative, the activities can be adapted for almost any level, and you can easily use them to practice listening, speaking, reading, or writing.

Do your students enjoy drawing activities too? Let me know your favorite one in the comments!