It’s hard to believe that the first full month of school is
already behind us! All the Spanish
students have remembered so much from last year, so we are moving ahead!
Early Childhood
My bear friend, Fuzzy, and I have been to see the students
in the Early Childhood center several times.
The students are learning the Welcome Song and how to say “Hola, Señora
Swift”. Fuzzy has also introduced
numbers and colors through songs, games and books.
Kindergarten
The Kindergarteners have quickly learned the routines and
have now dived into a study of simple greetings, numbers to 5 and colors. It has been fun learning the colors in
Spanish because the students have been experimenting with colors in Science as
well as doing lots of color activities in the Kindergarten classroom.
First Grade
The first graders have added to a base of simple greetings
and polite phrases and expanded their study of numbers to 10. Ask a first grader to count backwards from 10
to 1 in Spanish! Recently they have
finished a study of vocabulary for la
cara (the face). Take a look at
their smiling caras on the Spanish
bulleting board! They worked hard to label all the parts of a face using their
own faces.
Second Grade
The second graders spent all of September getting ready for
their imaginary trip to Spain! They had
to make their own pasaportes (passports),
boletos (tickets), and maletas (suitcases) with ropa (clothing). The plane took off on Friday, September 23
with Mrs. McCrimmon as the ticket counter agente
and Mrs. Dubé as the security agente.
Now it is time for the bus tour of Madrid and a train trip to the Spanish
cities.
Third Grade
The third graders started the year learning classroom
commands in Spanish and reviewing the greeting phrases so that they could put
them together into a simple conversation.
After practicing with partners, they turned the phrases into a comic
with some creative characters.
Recently, they have just finished a study of numbers from 0 – 20 or from
20 – 100. We even did math problems in
Spanish! Hey, is this math class or
Spanish class?
Fourth Grade
The fourth graders took the greeting phrases to a new level
by learning the difference between the informal and formal forms of “you” (i.e.
tú and usted). With this information,
they could now ask and answer questions like ¿Cómo te llamas? (What is your name?) or ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?). The students then wrote a simple script
for 2 – 3 characters to perform for their friends, which I videotaped. Lately
they have been working on a study of numbers up to 1000 and practicing with the
Quizlet account that has been set up for each student.
Fifth Grade
The fifth graders started the year with an interview project
where they interviewed a classmate in Spanish and then used the information to
write a presentation so they could orally present their classmate to their
peers. The final result was an
impressive videotape of their presentations.
The end of the month focus was on numbers up to 100 or 1,000 or 10,000
depending on the differentiated levels of work.
Mexico’s Día de la
Independencia Celebration
On September 16th
the Grade 3-5 Spanish classes celebrated Mexico's Independence Day. This
special holiday begins at 11:00 pm in Mexico and continues through September 16th,
which is the day that Father Hidalgo made his famous "Grito de
Dolores" to inspire the people to revolt.
After watching videos or reading a Readers Theater play about the
history of Mexico's Independence Day dating back to 1810 and its significant
heroes, the students in grades 3-5 celebrated the holiday themselves by making
their own guacamole to eat with chips and salsa! The recipe will be coming home
soon!
Check out my
"Mrs. Swift" teacher website for many more photos from the month!
