Elementary and Middle School Spanish News - April and May

It is a joy to see students choosing Spanish books to read in their own time!

    

Lower Elementary students have been busy! Students wrote sentences using the verb ir - to go. Using the globe, students chose a country they would like to visit.  Each grammar lesson is presented in a natural, informal way. We use question words like  ¿Dónde?  (Where?) and ¿Cómo? (How?) to engage students in conversations.  Questions and answers are important to ensure a student’s understanding of the lesson. 

We also are describing pictures using the verb estar - to be.  For example: Los niños están corriendo -  the boys are running.

We are using vocabulary to discuss animals and their habitats.  Students name continents and animals, and then we play games where students ask and answer questions about animals in their habitats.  ¿Dónde está el gorila? - Where is the gorilla? El gorila está en Africa. – The gorilla is in Africa.

 

Every other year Lower Elementary students make a piñata. This year students made their own BEE piñata!  

We start each lesson with a mingling warm-up where students ask each other questions. The idea is for the students to begin speaking Spanish naturally and find out more about each other in the process.  This time of the year we work with many conversation activities.

 In Upper Elementary, after we finish a story, students create a timeline of the plot using pictures. I put on music and students draw part of the story on a personal white board. Then I stop the music and the students pass the white board to the next student who continues the drawing. We do this activity until the timer stops. At the end, the students use the drawings to tell the story as a class. This allows us to make sure we all understand the actions and grammar we used to tell the story.

Recently Upper Elementary students have been working with diptongos - words that have two vowels together in one syllable.  We looked for words with diptongos in the dictionary to gain familiarity using the Spanish /English dictionary. They use the words they find to write sentences. 

 

Students then wrote stories, and some students choose to write their own play. One group even wrote songs.

Middle School students are continuing to study indirect object pronouns and Spanish gender agreement. This year they have being working with many grammar activities. It’s always nice to see how the students help each other. ¡ Buen trabajo!