Adventures in Fat Bear Week 2026
Did you ever think “fat bears” could be a part of your Spanish curriculum? Guess what, they can! Each year explore.org, Katmai National Park, and the Katmai Conservancy come together to bring JOY to the National Park loving crowd with “Fat Bear Week.” Fat Bear Week is when the public come together and votes on which Grizzly has prepared itself best for the upcoming winter… aka eaten the most salmon and gotten the largest. The bear are paired together in a single elimination bracket to fight for the crown!
What does including “Fat Bear Week” in my classroom look like? This year I want to aim for exposure, practice, and repetitions with three key things: Numbers, Simple Comparisons, and “gusta.” These are things my Spanish 1 students have already seen in class, so they are things they can easily engage with. My Spanish 3 have just finished up a unit on what they liked / preferred as a child, so that vocabulary is fresh for them as well!
Here’s how it will work: On Monday, before voting begins, I’ll introduce “La semana del oso gordo” and where the concept comes from using the intro slide. I’ll introduce the “key” vocabulary and do gestures. This will take the place of my “routines” like weather, how are you for the week.
On Tuesday, when voting begins, I will introduce each bear that is in the bracket for that day, we will do a question or two about each pair of bears, and students will vote. This is a GREAT way to work in a LOT of numbers and repetition with comparisons. We will tally the votes from all classes and cast 1 vote at the end of day on explore.org.
On Tuesday / Wednesday night as the worldwide votes are tallied, I will update our bracket and add the “ganadores” from each round and set up the next round of votes. For secondary rounds of votes, we will do a quick review of the bears and their numbers, some comparisons, and voting.
Finally, by the 29th, we should have a winner! More importantly, we should have a whole lot of joy around watching some fat bears eat fish on the livestream from Katmai National Park during our independent work time!
Do you want to join me in bringing “Fat Bear Week 2026” to your Spanish classroom? Thanks for the amazing team at explore.org in partnership with Katmai National Park and Katmai Conservancy, image and information were available for me to put together some slides for you to use! This slideshow is NOT editable – but you can visit explore.org to get images to create your own as well! This is a link to a Canva template version of the slideshow. It MAY be editable if you have an educator / Pro account – however, fonts and graphic may change when you begin editing. If you love these slides, I’d be honored if you’d make a donation to Katmai Conservancy so they can continue to protect these amazing Grizzlies and put out fun events like Fat Bear Week!