Mrs. Smith

Our students in grades 5 - 8 were the "Teachers for the Day" in our Spanish classes this week. Each grade from these levels invited TWO younger grade classrooms (from both 4 year old preschools, all the kindergartens, and all of first through third grades) to come in and work with us on some Spanish language activities in celebration of Cinco de mayo. I am so proud of the wonderful job our students did working all together as a school. Check out our pictures!

Hard to believe it is already May!! This year is going so fast; it's already time for reviewing:
1st grade - went over our color words. Sang the song we learned last fall "Los colores" to help us remember the Spanish vocab words. We will be creating "Word Journals" with all of the words we have gone over this year.
2nd grade - continued to work on our last unit of Action words. They are picking these words up so quickly!
3rd grade - Still working on our food books; next week they should be completed and sent home. We will then begin a review of all of the units we covered this year.
4th grade - Also reviewing our first theme from last fall - Greetings in Spanish. We will also be creating Word Journals with all of our vocab that we covered this year.
5th grade - oral practice with the new vocab for Clothing - also did a song in Spanish to help us review our words.
6th grade - Began our last group of words for this year - adverbs in Spanish. This group of words allows the students to express how often they do a particular activity. They then used a prompt I gave them to create full sentences in Spanish - along with their previous vocab for class subjects - to tell how often they have certain classes at school.
7th grade - collected our Menu Project; played a Spanish vocab words Bingo game.
8th grade - in preparation for next week, went over the meaning and history of the celebration for Cinco de mayo as well as the history behind the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

This week, only classes on Tuesday met due to the Junior Achievement program held on Thursday.
1st grade - did a read aloud of the Spanish story titled "Un alce, veinte ratones" by Clare Beaton. Then the students read aloud themselves in small groups, to the class, from our Action words books that we created. They did a great job.
2nd grade - did a read aloud of the Spanish story titled "Un alce, veinte ratones" by Clare Beaton. Began our last unit, which is action words. The students acted the words out as we spoke them to help remember the meaning.
4th grade - Reviewed our "Sports" vocab words with a game of Matamosca.
5th grade - Began our last group of vocab words - CLOTHING. We practiced this new vocab by working in two teams. I said a clothing word out loud in Spanish while a student from each team raced through boxes of clothing items to find the one matching the Spanish word I said.
6th grade - passed back our tests. They did a great job. Played Spanish vocabulary Bingo with our vocab words.
7th grade - Went to the computer lab to finish our menu project (see previous entries).
8th grade - Reviewed useful classroom vocab that will come in handy if your student takes Spanish in high school next year. Some of the phrases included directions to follow in Spanish that a teacher would give to a student such as: Open/close your books, have a seat, raise your hand, look at the board, ask a classmate..., take out a pencil, pass in the homework, etc., etc.

Students in Tuesday's classes were the only classes to meet this week due to Religion Day!
1st grade - now finished with our action words books and began reading aloud in Spanish. They sound great!
2nd grade - Did not meet due to the play.
3rd grade - Did not meet (Religion Day).
4th grade - Students traded their completed Sports Words word search with a classmate. They worked to translate a classmate's clues from English to Spanish.
5th grade - Began a new unit in our textbook - Clothing words and colors to describe them.
6th grade - Passed back the test; also did a written review of our vocab for extra practice.
7th grade - Continued working on our menu project, using the computer lab.
8th grade - Students traded their completed word searches with a classmate, translating the English clues into Spanish in order to solve the puzzle.

1st grade - Continuing/finishing our mini-books with our action words. Children are writing the Spanish words underneath a corresponding picture and we will then begin to read the books aloud.
2nd grade - Students worked together in teams, doing an oral/written practice review game, using mini-chalkboards. Congratulations to Joanna, Kevin P., Henry and Julia and also to Tele. Congratulations to our second session class as well - Casey, Marty Grace U. and Luke!
3rd grade - We continued with our food unit with an oral review of the vocab, and then the students began making their "Food" books, sorting the words in Spanish into categories such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.
4th grade - Began creating Word Searches with our sports vocab.
5th grade - Listened to the song titled "Guapo". The students loved it and were singing along in Spanish by the end of class. They also worked to fill in the blanks in Spanish, on the lyrics sheet. They did a great job!
6th grade - Took an open-notebook test!
7th grade - Began a new project - creating a Menu in Spanish. This includes several requirements such as naming their restaurant and creating the dishes offered in each of five different categories (in Spanish).
8th grade - Created a word search in Spanish based on one of the topics we have studied this year.

1st grade - now creating mini-books using our Action Words. Students are writing the vocab word that corresponds to the picture in the book. We will begin practing reading these books out loud in Spanish next week.
2nd grade - Played "Magic Squares" with our Spanish vocab words; ask your child how this worked!
3rd grade - Began a new unit - FOOD words. Students worked in teams to create posters including these new words in Spanish, by labeling pictures cut out from grocery store advertisements.
4th and 5th grade - Went to the computer lab and used the "Quia" website.
6th grade - Two activities today included a Pairs activity "grab" game. Students worked with a partner and a stack of picture cards corresponding to our School subjects and School supplies/classroom objects vocab. Students also received a picture page of a classroom on which they needed to label as many items on the page (using Spanish only). Any work not done is due next week.
7th grade - Worked in the Computer lab on the "Quia" website.
8th grade - Completed presentations of our research from the Web Quest completed in the computer lab.

1st grade - Oral practice of our Action Words. Students reviewed by acting out the Spanish words they heard me say aloud, as well as telling me the Spanish word when given a visual prompt.
2nd grade - Reviewed our vocab with a game of "BUZZ". Ask your child how this game is played.
3rd grade - Did not meet due to the All School Mass.
4th grade - Finished posters from last week (see last entry). Played "Group Memory" with our new words.
5th grade - Passed back and went over the quiz from last week.
6th grade - Introduction of new vocab from the text - Classroom Objects/School supplies. Two activities this week included: Oral practice of our Vocab with a game of "Matamoscas", and a listening comprehension practice by working in two teams, each racing against the other in pairs, to grab the Spanish classroom object word said aloud in Spanish.
7th grade - Created "Magic Squares" with our vocab words. Students gave their own "Magic Square" to a classmate to be solved. Ask your child how this activity works!
8th grade - Now beginning individual presentations based on our research from the computer lab.

1st grade - Added four more Action Words to our unit. Acted out the words to help us remember them. Also played "Matamoscas" to review our vocab. Students are practicing a new song called "Hasta luego".
2nd grade - Students worked on three different activities - a Spanish word search of our vocab as well as a crossword puzzle (giving the English translation as a clue for the Spanish word answer to the puzzle), and finally, a flashcard review in small groups.
3rd grade - Created special Easter cards using both Spanish and English.
4th grade - Practiced our brand new vocab words ("Sports") that the students selected by creating posters with the Spanish words and an illustration to show the word's meaning.
5th grade - QUIZ!
6th grade - Written practice this week by doing "Pyramid words" with our vocab.
7th grade - Went to the computer lab to practice our food vocab on a new web site called "Word Champ". We are looking forward to utilizing this valuable online tool.
8th grade - Last day in the lab to work on our Web Quest!

1st grade - began a new unit - action words! The kids had fun acting out the vocab and learned the words so fast by using physical actions to represent the word.
2nd grade - The students read aloud from their mini books titled "Donde estas?". They did a great job reading in Spanish.
3rd grade - Passed back quizzes. Did a review game of our vocab called "BUZZ". The students enjoyed this new game; ask our child how we played it.
4th grade - passed back quizzes. The students voted on our next unit and the winning topic is "SPORTS". The class then worked in small teams to create a vocab list, using dictionaries to select the words they wanted to include for our new unit!
5th grade - Finished our presentations using our Spanish sentences focusing on adjectives and descriptive words (see last week).
6th grade - Students finished reading their Spanish sentences related to school subjects vocab. Also worked in pairs to interview a partner in Spanish - asking and answering questions about their classes.
7th grade - finished team presentations of our new FOOD vocab; created our new vocab list with these words from each team.
8th grade - Continuing our research in the lab for our Web Quest.

A look at our week....
1st grade - We did a read aloud - in Spanish only - of the popular story "Corre, perro, corre" (Go, dog, go!). This book contains many of the words we have already learned this school year, and the kids did a great job understanding this text in Spanish.
2nd grade - Finished creating our mini books using our Special Places words. The students began presenting their stories to the class, reading the Spanish sentences they have written. They are doing a great job with our new words.
3rd grade - Took a quiz on our Months of the Year.
4th grade - Took a quiz on Classroom Objects vocab.
5th grade - Students read a description of a classmate (completely in Spanish) to the class. This description included someone's hair color, eye color, personality traits and what they like and do not like. We used all these clues to guess which student was being described!
6th grade - finished up with our rankings of our class subjects - in Spanish, including an illustration to go with each vocab word and an adjective to describe it (see last week). Then the students used their work to make three Spanish sentences to read aloud to the class, telling their favorite and/or least favorite subjects.
7th grade - finished working in their groups with their projects from last week (see last entry) and began presenting the new vocab to the class.
8th grade - Tuesday - continued with our web quest in the computer lab. Thursday's class did written practice with Spanish verbs.