Food was the core topic studied during the last trimester of Español Intermedio MS. The first part of this unit was centered around exploring the presence of food within each student’s life. Students engaged in a wide variety of activities, from tailoring what food vocabulary words to learn to their own likes and dislikes, to reading and writing short poems about food, and filming themselves describing their breakfasts and comparing different foods. Students honed both their writing and speaking skills focusing on the use of comparisons of equality, inequality, and the superlatives. Subsequently, the focus on the second part of this unit was on the connection each student had to a specific dish. The inspiration for this approach comes from the book Cuentos con sazón by Puerto Rican author Lulu Delacre. In these short stories, through the eyes of a young girl, a family explores and shares the significance of certain dishes. Hence, each student selected a recipe meaningful to them or to their families. They wrote a detailed list of ingredients and step-by-step recipes, recorded videos of themselves preparing these dishes, and lastly, they wrote about a short memory associated with each recipe. Grammatically, students learned and incorporated the use of informal positive and negative commands, and direct object pronouns.
Throughout this virtual trimester Intermedio MS students also had the opportunity to finish their alebrijes! They had started building these papel maché sculptures at the end of last trimester, and over the course of the last three months they have continued working on them. To conclude the year, each student has created an unique fotonovela featuring their beautiful alebrijes. In these they’ve incorporated all the vocabulary and grammar concepts they’ve learned throughout the year.
The last trimester of Intermediate 1 High school was a time for students to consolidate on past knowledge and learn new tools to prepare to enter the Intermediate 2 level class. The title for our third theme of the year was “¡Vamos de compras a Uruguay y Argentina!”, and focused on vocabulary for fashion and clothes, as well as on specific aspects of the day-to-day life of people from Argentine and Uruguay. Using the preterite and imperfect tenses hand-in-hand, students articulated their ideas and opinions in a more advanced way, as they now have the tools to express themselves even more freely. This trimester’s work culminated in a Fotonovela Project, which was a fun way to apply their knowledge from trimester 1 and 2 such as using tenses of the past to tell a story but also using their newly acquired skills, such as using possessives pronouns and direct object pronouns. Students let their creativity run wild, as they first wrote their dramatic stories, involving several characters in different and somewhat ridiculous predicaments. The more dramatic and silly, the better! Once their stories were ready, each student got assigned a random story from the class (which remained anonymous throughout the whole process), and had to create a visual to illustrate the story, in the form of a fotonovela. This allowed students to use their reading comprehension skills, as they had to understand what the story they were assigned was about, but it also allowed them to let their own vision of the story come out, the way they pictured it in their minds. Finally, every student presented their creations to the rest of the class, unveiling whose story each student was assigned.
Using the short novel Vector by Carrie Toth as inspiration, students in Intermediate II spent the trimester exploring the historical and cultural context for the construction of the Panama Canal. Through listening and reading activities, discussions, and writing assignments, students investigated topics like the economic significance of the canal, the engineering of the canal, and the daily lives of the workers with regard to medical access, the spread of disease, and segregation. Students wrote research essays about Panama during the time of construction and produced creative expression projects reflecting on the themes and symbols presented in the book. Additionally, students practiced their listening skills by watching a segment of a telenovela each week, and they sharpened their critical thinking skills by reporting on a weekly current event from the Spanish-speaking world. As a class, they created a news podcast in which they summarize and reflect on some of the stories they read over the past few months. Grammatically, students solidified their understanding of the imperative mood, and they began their journey into the world of the subjunctive mood!