¡Hola familias!
I am very pleased with how our students have started off the school year in Spanish class! We're working on some very exciting projects and students' enthusiasm and quality of work has been impressive.
Last week I introduced students to Google Voice which will allow me to assess their speaking ability outside of the classroom. Our first assignment was simple: call the Google Voice number and leave me a message in Spanish telling me about something they were doing over the weekend. This is something that we will do occasionally through out the year with different prompts or questions for students to answer.
We also just completed a PhotoStory3 project in which students created a video about their lives narrated entirely in Spanish. I asked students to share these with you, so if you haven't received an email with the link to your student's video, ask them again! The videos are great and I really think you'll enjoy seeing it!
If you haven't yet, please take a moment to subscribe to this blog. There is a link at the bottom of the page that says "subscribe by email." It will be a great way for you to hear about what we're up to in Spanish class this year.
¡Gracias!
Señora Tiernan Fisher
Great blog. Thank you for providing this. I love the voice practice using the phone. You are really using technology at its fullest potential and providing students with many opportunities to use skills.
ReplyDeleteThanks for checking it out, Ms. Gillard!
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ReplyDeleteOn Monday we had Spanish speakers come into our class. Their names were Javier and Kalil; they are both going to UVM. I thought talking to them was really fascinating because I've never heard a true Spanish accent before. I was also really glad that we had one person from Spain(Javier) and one from the Dominican Republic(Kalil) because you could hear the difference in their accents. It was funny to hear Javier say things with a "th" sound instead of "c" sound or a "s" sound. I also enjoyed the fact that they both liked soccer! I liked how Javier liked Real Madrid. Kalil was funny and it was really cool hearing Senora go back and forth talking to them. I never knew that the Dominican listened to some music in English, that was a fun fact to learn. I hope we do something like this again because it was really fun and cool to learn about them and their life. They both traveled a lot too! Javier said he had been to 15 different countries. I thought that it was interesting to hear their names to, Kalil's interested me the most because I didn't know that was a Spanish name. I also never knew that the school systems were different in Spain and the Dominican so that was new information also. Over all it was really interesting talking to them and I really enjoyed it, hopefully they did to!
ReplyDeleteI really liked the visitors who came to our school. It was really cool to be able to speak to people from different places and have them talk to us. It was really fun to be able to understand what they were saying sometimes. Other times they were talking really fast for me to understand. Thank you to all of the visitors who came. I liked the activity a lot and wish to do it again sometime. I hope you all enjoyed speaking to us as much as i did!
ReplyDelete- Jess
Great post Jess! I am glad that you enjoyed the activity so much. I am sure that the visitors appreciated that you were all such a great audience. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteMs. Gillard
As part of practice with español, our class had four native Spanish speakers visit our classroom. Among them was Paola, Javier, Jaime, and Eva. Upon meeting them, they were very friendly and lively. Our class all asked them questions about their likes and dislikes, and daily lives. An example of a question was as follows: “Te gusta nadar?” (Do you like to swim?). With the exception of Eva, who was in her thirties, all of the visitors were in their twenties. They enjoyed “hablar con amigos” and “beber café”. All of them were from Spain, but different parts. All-in-all, it was a fun learning experience for students just starting out in the language.
ReplyDeleteThis is great feedback! I think having guest speakers is a great way to learn new things. Just having someone new makes things come alive more. You have shown that you got a lot out of the experience. Thank you for sharing your ideas on the blog!
ReplyDeleteMs. Gillard
I liked the oppurtunity to use the spanish that I have learned and learn a little extra spanish too, from a conversation on skype. Also before we had the quest speakers and that was pretty fun too.
ReplyDeleteIt was an enjoyable experience for me to have a chance to talk to someone who is currently living in a Latin American country over Skype. Through this, I have walked away form this experience with a deeper understanding of not only Latin American culture, but what it's like to live there. Meagan told us about the holiday traditions of Costa Rica, but she also spent some time explaining how the average Costa Rican spends their day. This was an enjoyable experience and I hope we will get to do more things like this during class.
ReplyDeleteYou folks are certainly learning many authentic cultural facts and language facts that you couldn't in any other way except using technology. I didn't have these opportunities as a student and it is so exciting to watch you use it to broaden your understanding of the world. You are lucky to have a teacher so willing and able to explore and teach with technology in transformative ways! Thank you for continuing to share your ideas and thoughts!
ReplyDeleteMs. Gillard
When we Skyped with Meagan, it was a really fun experience because it was really neat to me how much we learned. The Spanish culture sure is different then the one I live in. I liked seeing the differences in our culture. It was also fun to understand how they lived their life in Costa Rica. What they ate for a typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner! She told us about how they celebrated holidays and special occasions such as birthdays. It was neat and unusual how they celebrated compared to how we celebrate. I really hope that we could do this again. The Skype call was a really great experience.
ReplyDeleteIn Spanish class we skyped with Meagan, and it was so fun! It was very cool to be able to see her, but have her be in a completely different place than us! Especially Costa Rica! She told us many things about Costa Rica, and many things about what she does there and what many Costa Ricans do! I got to see how the Spanish live their lives, and realized it is a lot different than ours! I really enjoyed doing this and hope we can do this kind of fun activity again!
ReplyDeleteI liked that the Spanish food gave us a cultural glimpse into Spanish speaking countries eating habits.
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