Wow!

Fourth graders have been learning about the Mayan tradition of a 'nagual', a guardian animal spirit which can serve to protect you. As part of a larger project, students answered three questions about what we have learned in class. One student found she just didn't have enough room on the sheet, so she went home, wrote all she had learned and brought it back to me the next day. Wow!!

Smart thinking!

One of my fourth graders made an observation last Friday..... he came up to me and said, 'I noticed that some of the days of the week are like some of the planet names, like martes (Tuesday) is like Marte (Mars) and lunes (Monday) is like luna (moon).' Wow! What an example of a student thinking about the language and how words connect one to the other!! (We had done a theme on outer space in Third Grade, and the planets with their names are displayed in our classroom).... definitely smart thinking!

Los Maya y el Nagual

Fourth Graders have been learning adjectives to describe their personalities.... artístico, atlético, valiente, musical, etc, paying particular attention to matching the grammatical gender of the adjective to themselves (wow! great job!). In other words, if you are a girl, you would say 'generosA' not 'generosO'. We are now taking this vocabulary and incorporating it into a project in which they are also learning about a Mayan belief centered on one's nagual, or one's spirit creature. In the words of Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, "When we are born, a little creature is born with us. Sometimes that creature is wiser than we are. It's aware of the risks we take, and so it must protect us as it protects itself. You can have a tiger, a lion, a coyote or a bear as a nagual. Or a pig, or a mouse, or a fox. All creatures are beautiful. All animals play their role. All animals are good because they help the earth to exist. Without them, we would cease to exist." (The Girl from Chimel)
Students have chosen an animal they would like to be their nagual and are writing descriptions of themselves and their nagual using our adjectives. ¡Chévere!

Frutas deliciosas

First Graders have been learning two most important sentence starters "Me gustan....." (I like) and 'No me gustan" (I don't like), revisiting fruit vocabulary from Kindergarten to share which fruits they like. We've had fun discovering which fruits our classmates like and which ones they don't. Kids brought home a fun illustration of a fruit they like.... ask them to read the sentence at the bottom!

La migración de la mariposa monarca

Second Graders have been learning vocabulary centered on our theme of 'Mariposas' (Butterflies), working on full sentences including the all important word 'es' (is).... La mariposa es verde. (The butterfly is green), colors, and size words.... building simple full sentences is an early step in learning grammatical components of the language, albeit without the students knowing they are actually learning grammar. I am so proud of them!

We are also participating in Journey North's Symbolic Migration... an incredible program which mimics the real migration of the Monarch Butterflies to México. Check out their site to learn more!

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/sm/index.html

We are tracking the monarchs as they migrate south, using Journey North's 'Peak Sightings' map... such a cool way to integrate Spanish, geography, and science!

Finally up and running!

After a few challenges, I have gotten our Spanish Class school blog up and running! This is a wonderful place for me to share what is going on in our classes.... I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to leave comments!

Kindergartners have started off the year with the obvious... ¡Hola! (Hello!) and ¡Adiós! (Good bye)... but we are also working on learning the Spanish names for classroom materials: el pego (glue), un lápiz (pencil), un borrador (eraser), un cráyon (crayon), and un cubo (a bin). I refer to these materials endlessly in class, so a natural place to start.

Abrazos,
Señora V.