Hola familias (Hello families),

The second trimester is well under way and the Spanish learning continues! Here is what your children have been up to:

Grades 1-3: We Just finished a unit on school supply vocabulary. We did a lot of coloring, videos, games, puzzles and speaking activities. I think a favorite word might be: pegamento. See if your child remembers what it means! They particularly love the video of a song called: ¿Dónde está mi mochila? That phrase means: Where is my backpack?

Now we are starting to review numbers (or learn for the first time). We will have a variety of activities to do and the kids will be learning how to count and say how old they are.

Grades 4-5 and 6-7: Students just finished a unit called “Making Requests,” where they worked on classroom vocabulary as well as phrases such as “I need” and “Pass to me.” They particularly liked when I let them “order me around” for a day, as I retrieved pencils, moved tables, etc. based on sentences they wrote and spoke!

We have now moved on to a unit called “Numbers and Their Uses.” We will practice numbers up to 199, but will also be working on how to use those numbers in practical, every-day sentences. The Grade 6/7 class will go a little further with the language than the 4/5 class. We will also be looking at money from around the Spanish speaking world, which is always interesting.

Grade 8: We are wrapping up a challenging unit on describing classes. Students are learning how to use a variety of verbs and sentence structures to write an essay. They are doing a great job and will have an assessment on Tuesday, February 4.

After this unit, we will be working on how to talk about places, using a couple of tricky verbs: to go and to be. We will also build on their activities vocabulary.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Sra. Cole

First Trimester at Barnard- a success!

We have had a great start to the school year! Going forward, I will post on a regular basis, but for this first blog, let me tell you all about the first trimester.

All students in grades 1-8 started the year learning how to greet each other, tell their names, and express feelings. Students in grades 4-8 also practiced telling where they are from, as well as other conversational basics, such as “It is nice to meet you” and “May I go to the bathroom?”

Next, all students practiced expressing likes and dislikes of foods and beverages. Students in 8^th grade also leaned how to conjugate verbs in the present tense and were able to form simple sentences about food, such as:  She eats apples or they drink milk. While the older students dug deeper into food vocabulary, the younger students learned and practiced colors.

For students in grades 4-8, the trimester ended with a simulated flight to Spain! The room was set up as an airplane and the students were challenged with only speaking Spanish for the class period. After obtaining a boarding pass and hearing safety instructions, the plane took off! Passengers were able to order a beverage and a snack from the “flight attendant,” Luisa. They problem-solved when they did not know vocabulary and a few even got “motion sick” from the turbulence! The in-flight movie was a few minutes of Frozen, in Spanish. Then, we landed in Spain! It was a great way to practice all the vocabulary learned during the trimester, in an real-life situation. I was proud of them for speaking and listening to Spanish for 45 minutes.

By the way, have you heard about Pepe and Tilda?  They are beloved puppets in our classroom, especially for the grades 1-3 students.  Pepe is a monkey from Gibraltar and Tilda is a turtle from the Galapagos Islands. We have started talking about those places and how they connect to the Spanish speaking world. The puppets only speak Spanish, so if a student wants to communicate with them, Spanish it is! Tilda is very shy and does not like loud noises; she will retreat into her shell if it gets too crazy in the classroom. You can see Tilda in the picture above.

And now we are on to the second trimester! Check back in soon for updates.