March - Español in the Elementary classes

“I believe that acquiring a new language happens best through JOY.”

One of the stories that Lower Elementary students are working on is La Selva: The Jungle.  We looked at the Africa map, listened to some African music, made masks and drawings, and then  performed a play.

One of the favorite things in Lower Elementary is to identify and summarize the main point and significant details of a story.  The students also like to predict what will happen in the story.

Middle Elementary students have finished the novel Las aventuras de Isabela.  This novel has high frequency vocabulary and grammatical structures.  This story takes place in Guanajuato, Mexico, and the students had a chance to see pictures of the city.  I asked the students how many places they recognize in the story and which places they would like to visit.

Students  summarize and draw the story.

The students chose one chapter from the story and took turns reading paragraphs in Spanish and then translating them into English.

When the students finished reading the story Las Aventuras de Isabela, they put on a play about one of the chapters. In this chapter, Isabella and her mother go to the church and take pictures, and Isabella touches the statues with her feet.

Another group worked on a story about a monkey and a cow who live in Mar de Plata, Argentina.

Please look around campus and see the great work that Middle Elementary is knitting! 

In order to demonstrate and improve speaking skills in Spanish,  Upper Elementary students are provided continuous opportunities to speak both formally and informally in class.   After students finished  their writing assignments (some vary from 75-200 words),  they presented them to the rest of the group in Spanish.

One group made a list of places in the United States with Spanish name like cities, mountains, and rivers.  They explained where each place is located and what the name means.

 

We finished our novel Pobre Ana.  Students wrote a sequel of the story and performed a play and a song about it.