Aquí hay mis amigos......

We finished up our unit on basic descriptions.  We can now describe ourselves and others using a variety of words.  Our final project was to describe some of our friends.  We did this using a website called fotobabble which let us upload a picture and then record ourselves talking about it.  Here are some of us describing our friends.

¿Qué tiempo hace?

Spanish 1 students have finished the unit in which they learned to talk about the weather.  To show what they learned, they applied for a job as a meteorologist with Tele CFHS.  Here is their audition tape for the job.

They also prepared weather/seasons books using a website called zooburst which lets ou create pop-up books.  Here are a couple of examples for you to read and listen to:

El Día de los muertos

We finished up our calendar unit, started a unit on the weather, and at the same time learned a little bit about the Mexican holiday of El Día de los Muertos, which is celebrated on November 1 and 2.  In honor of this holiday, students decorated  calaveras (skulls).  Here are a few examples:

Next week we will be finishing our weather reports and discussing activities we like to do.

¿Cuál es la fecha?

This week in Spanish 1 we sang, we danced, we played Scatter.....and so much more, all in our quest to master the days of the week and the months of the year.  I don't think I've ever had a class that liked to sing so much.  If I could put the entire Spanish language to music, they would easily have it mastered by now :)  In the meantime, just ask them to dance the Macarena Months for you.        (And while the picture at the left is an actual calendar, it is a little more complicated than the ones we have been using in class.)



picture credit:  commons.wikimedia.org

¿Qué hora es?

We have been busy this past week.  First we learned to count, not just to 10 or 20, not just to 100, but all the way to 1000 and beyond.  We learned a verrrrrry serious numbers song (thanks to Etienne and iTunes). And the favorite number for half the class is 2, 495, 678 as that number gave them a come-from-behind victory in the numbers game we played.  Once basic numbers were mastered, there were all kinds of things we could do like give our telephone numbers and street addresses and  tell time, even using military time sometimes.  Definitely a busy week.

En mi clase

Last week Spanish 1 students learned the vocabulary of the classroom.  They can now tell you what items they have with them in class, in their estuches (pencil cases), and in general, what things are present in the classroom.  We also talked about gender, how everything in Spanish is either male or female even if it is an inanimate object, and how that affects the language (unlike English which does make this distinction).  We looked at a classroom supply list from Spain and compared it to ours.  We played classroom Bingo and another game that got everyone off their feet and moving to learn the names of all these classroom things.  Next lesson:  counting and time.

¿De dónde eres?

This past week Spanish 1 students have been working on asking where someone is from as well as answering that question. Since it's not all that interesting when we are all from the same place, students spun the wheel and were given a Spanish-speaking city and country to be from. We are now a very globalized class with students from Suan Juan, Puerto Rico, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and various other exotic locales. Of course, part of being a global citizen is knowing various capital cities around the world, inour case, especially Hispanic ones. To help us learn them, we used a great song. Feel free to ask any of the Spanish 1 students to sing it for you. (I wouldn't be surprised if Spanish 2-4 students still remember it.

♪♪♪  México D.F., Méxioco, Guatemala, Guatemala, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.......♪♪♪ 

Quiero presentarme

Hola.

Spanish 1 students have been busy learning how to introduce themselves to one another as well as how to introduce their amigos and amigas to each another.  We did a short project to show you what we can do so far.  Using the website, www.voki.com, we created speaking avatars, recorded our voices, and this is what we got:

Adiós until next week.

Cantando el alfabeto

Week 2 down, and we were busy this week.  We learned some basic rules of Spanish pronunciation as well as the Spanish alphabet.  Highlight:  singing the alphabet song....go ahead, just ask any Spanish 1 student to sing it for you.  We also learned how to escape from class....or to ask permission to go somewhere--bathroom, locker, office, etc.  And we learned how to ask how to say or spell things in Spanish, as well as how to use the Spanish/English dictionary and how to type Spanish characters on the computer.  On to week 3.

Bienvenidos

Bienvenidos--welcome!!  We all have survived our first week in Spanish class.  I introduced myself to the class, completely in Spanish--Caramba!!!  Students were pretty surprised to find out that they could understand almost everything I said, even though they didn't know much Spanish at all.  So, the first lesson learned was that if you listen carefully, there are many similarities between Spanish and English, and you probably can pick out many words.  We have talked about our classroom rules and procedures (not exactly the most interesting of topics, but a necessary one). We also picked Spanish names and then learned how to introduce ourselves.  Students have also been able to log-in to our class wikipages and navigate around them to see what things are there for them to use.  They have learned how to call in oral assignments by cellphone or leave an online voice message, as well as how to hand in written assignments via an online dropbox.  We are trying to go more green and do more things online.  On to week 2.

Bienvenidos

Welcome to our Spanish 1 blog.  It is our intent to write a weekly post to let you know what we have been up to.  (It is our intent now, anyway, to do this weekly, but as the year goes on and we get busier.....well, you know how it goes.)  We hopefully will also be posting pictures and links to some of our work and projects so you can see for yourself what we have accomplished.  So, we hope you will stop by each week, check us out, and let us know what you think--just leave a comment.  Adios for now.