Skype in the Classroom!

This fall 8th grade Spanish classes had the opportunity to Skype with someone in Costa Rica.  One of our  8th graders has an older sister studying abroad in Heredia, Costa Rica, and she was kind enough to talk with each class and answer their questions about Costa Rica and studying abroad in general.  Students asked questions in both Spanish and English and had very interesting conversations with our guest speaker.

This was our first time using Skype in the classroom, and it went off without a hitch!   

We had a very busy first quarter of the school year in Spanish class.  After completing the Mi Vida multimedia project to review content from 7th Grade Spanish, we began our first new unit of the year, El Día Escolar, or The School Day.  In this unit students learned:

• vocabulary for classes in school
• adjectives to describe classes
• ordinal numbers for class periods
• additional vocabulary for objects around the classroom
• prepositional phrases to describe location
• how to tell time
• two new verbs, tener- to have, and estar- to be

It was a very large unit!  Students worked on a project in which they wrote a letter to another 8th grade Spanish student about their school schedules.  I exchanged the letters among students and they replied to their temporary pen pal.

For their unit assessment students verbally answered a series of questions that I asked them one on one.  There was a lot of information to master in order to understand all of the questions and answer them appropriately, and for the most part students did very well!

I believe one of the most memorable classes we've had recently was our visit with native Spanish speakers.  A few weeks ago five international undergraduate and graduate students from UVM came to CMS to talk with my classes.  Every student asked a question in Spanish to our guests.  It was very exciting to see beginning level students carry on a conversation with people from Spain and the Dominican Republic!  I was very proud of them!