¡La familia, el avión, y caliente!

I was recently reading an article on foreign language acquisition and read this: "Students who participated in a foreign language program prior to secondary school were more likely to continue their world language study." My hope is that your students continue to study Spanish into their high school years!

Here's what your students have been doing in Spanish class:

Kindergarten:

Kindergarten just finished learning or reviewing numbers 1-10. Some highlights from our min-unit were the number song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6ojH4UU_qk) and the sidewalk chalk jumping activity. In this activity, students wrote the numbers on the sidewalk. Then I said a number and they had to jump on that number. It was a beautiful day outside and a perfect practice activity!

The Kindergarteners are now starting a more thematic unit on La oruga muy hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar). We are learning the days of the week, via a chant (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyHyF_mDG8) - though the Kindergarteners do it MUCH better than the girls in the video. :D We are also learning the names of the various foods that the hungry caterpillar eats, while continuing to practice colors and numbers!

First and Second Grades

These classes are now on Episode 2 of the Salsa videos. Here's episode 2 if you'd like to watch it: http://www.gpb.org/salsa/making-soup. In this episode, Goldilocks goes back to the three bears' house to apologize to bebé oso and ends up making the bear family a new batch of soup.  

Here's the target vocabulary (with the actions we are learning). See previous blog for more vocabulary we are reviewing.

• caliente - hot (fan your mouth)
• frío - cold (hug yourself and shiver)
• papá - dad (hands high over your head like a papa bear)
• mamá - mom (hands midway up by your ears like a mama bear)
• bebé - baby (hands by your shoulders like a baby bear)
• ¡Hasta luego! - start in a salute and fling your hand up and to the side of your body like your waving goodbye)
• cuatro - four (show on fingers)
• cinco - five (show on fingers)

We will be doing activities to help us solidify the vocabulary for the next week and then move to the next episode.

Third and Fourth Grades

This unit is called "Fiestas de Yucatán." The past week, they received fake plane tickets and took the plane to the Yucatán, and they started the trip by reviewing colors and describing some of the things they saw at the start of their trip. In the coming weeks, we will be learning or reviewing numbers 1-100, writing sentences to describe a graph, comparing and contrasting the weather in the Yucatán with the weather in Minnesota, and describe how houses look in the Yucatán.

Fifth and Sixth Grades
Their unit is called "Cuadros de familia" ("Portraits of the Family"). They began the unit by learning the names of family members:

• papá - dad
• mamá - mom
• hermano - brother
• hermana - sister
• abuelo - grandpa
• abuela - grandma
• bebé - baby
• perro - dog
• gato - cat

In the coming weeks, they will be learning and practicing prepositions (particularly a la dereche de, a la izquierda de, and detrás de - to the right of, to the left of, and behind). Here's the chant we are using to remember prepositions: https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=eYeqUetm6fY. They will then use the new vocabulary to read a short paragraph describing a family portrait. They will use the information they read to label the family members in the picture. The 5th and 6th graders will have a quiz on the vocabulary the week of November 17th.