Novice Middle and High School
Students in Novice Spanish began their journey into the language by first thinking about the impact of the Spanish-speaking world in their own communities. We then expanded our perspective to think about people from Spanish-speaking countries who have made an impact in the United States as a whole. In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, students created a digital poster about a person of their choosing and wrote brief sentences in Spanish to describe their heritage, profession, and birthday. Then, we began to break down the sounds of the Spanish language by examining the alphabet. Students created illustrated acrostic poems by choosing a word in Spanish for each letter of their name. They put the illustrations together in a video and recorded themselves spelling their names and the words out loud. While discussing the history and cultural traditions of the Día de los muertos celebration, students created virtual ofrendas, or offerings, which they dedicated to a person or animal who had passed away. Additionally, students were exposed to a number of introductory phrases and vocabulary throughout the trimester, which they practiced in a variety of games and activities for listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Topics included the weather, numbers 0-20, days of the week, question words, some adjectives and cognates, and questions and responses for introducing oneself (name, birthday, age, where you’re from, and simple likes), and even a few current events! Grammatically, students explored the concept of formal versus informal situations through the use of the Spanish “tú” and “usted”, the concept of gender and number agreement between subject and adjective, and they delved into the world of verb conjugations with the verb “ser” in the present tense. The final project of the trimester gave students the opportunity to put everything together with a digital book called “Yo soy.” In it, students describe themselves and the people around them, paying special attention to the verb “ser” and the rules for adjectives.
Novice High Middle School
This fall, in this continuation of introductory Spanish, students have built upon the foundations from the previous year. This trimester, as part of the “Tiempo Libre en Colombia” unit, we studied leisure and past-times, and students were asked to create a their own game, with its own set of rules, specific equipment, and the best time and weather to play. Once their sports were ready, students presented them to the class in Spanish and then we proceeded to a vote. The categories went from "most original” to “craziest”, and the “most realistic”. The class hopes to get to play the winning games in the future, in a way that will be safe and fun!
Additionally, as part of our unit on Colombia, we explored the country’s culture and vibrant cities such as Bogota, as well as its geography. In parallel with learning how to discuss the weather in Spanish, students created their own weather report, creating their a meteorological map of Colombia and recording themselves discussing what the weather would be like in cities like Medellin, Cali and, of course, the capital city of Bogota.
This trimester’s main grammatical focus was on reviewing verbal endings for regular and irregular verbs in the present tense, as well as using the verb “gustar” in conjunction with nouns and verbs in the infinitive. We also practiced using structures such as “hay” and “no hay”, as well as giving our opinions and justifying them using “pienso que” and a number of new adjectives.