Spanish Update: Recap of Fall 2020

Spanish Update: Recap of Fall 2020

Dear Parents:

¡Hola! ¿Cómo están?

I hope everyone is healthy and well. As always, thank you for your collaboration and support in our Spanish classes over the past months.

The awareness that all human beings have the same needs, which they have learned to satisfy in richly diverse ways in response to varied environments--especially now in this ever-changing situation for our children, parents, and teachers--is one of the building blocks of a “Cosmic Education."

Dr. Montessori notes, “Linguistic capability and cultural awareness go hand in hand, both are vital necessities for today’s children." That being said, here is what has been happening in our Spanish classes over the past few months.

Primary: 

We continue to work with greetings as we review known material and introduce new vocabulary. We have started to learn names for articles of clothing, vehicles and modes of transportation, and classroom objects. We are learning to use the expressions: Yo tengo and yo no tengo (I have it and I don’t have it), and me gusta and no me gusta (I like it and I don’t like it). We are also learning vocabulary like grande (big) and pequeno (small), as well as the numbers 1 to 10.

We do a lot of work with animal vocabulary such as cow, cat, dog, chicken, mouse, lizard, etc. We enjoy singing songs, reading books, and reciting poems about the animals, and the children like imitating the animals' sounds and movements with their hands and bodies.    

I often read aloud to the children so they can listen to spoken Spanish and practice the sounds of the Spanish language, especially forms of consonants and vowels that are unique to the language.

In December, the children enjoyed singing holiday songs like "Feliz Navidad," "Feliz Hanukkah," and "Feliz Kwanza."

Lower Elementary:

The Lower Elementary children are very engaged in our Spanish classes and are making good progress learning basic dialogue and expressions. They continue to improve their reading and writing in Spanish at more advanced levels. The students enjoy working in their textbooks where they practice grammar concepts like verbs, prepositions, articles, etc., that they can use in conversation and translation.

We are working a lot on repetition to ensure that the students retain the new vocabulary they learn and are comfortable with their pronunciation.

Counting is a good introductory activity for a second language. It is for this reason that we have started with the numbers 1 to 100. The workbook provides opportunities to use the number vocabulary in a variety of ways.

The students have learned the names of the days of the week and months. They have also learned the song "Patitos cua cua cua," which reinforces their knowledge of numbers and Spanish expressions.

The students often practice applying their new knowledge to translate Spanish sentences into English.

Upper Elementary:

The Upper Elementary students are steadily learning new vocabulary while listening, reading, and writing in Spanish. They are conjugating the present indicative tense of regular verbs ending in -ar, -er, or -ir, as well as the verbs ser and estar. Students study the gender of Spanish nouns along with numbers, definite articles, and pronouns.

The students enjoy using the new vocabulary and grammatical structures in small sentences and conversation.

The children do a lot of individual work at different levels depending on their personal interests and comfort level with Spanish. But some topics we work on together as a group--particularly when it comes to vocabulary related to numbers, songs, conversation, and greetings. Most recently, the students learned the song "¿Por qué, por qué?"

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and I wish everyone excellent health, well-being, and peace in 2021.  

Muchas gracias,

Señora López

Spanish Teacher

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