Students in Novice Spanish began Trimester 2 by thinking about important cultural celebrations in the Spanish-speaking world, specifically focusing on El año nuevo and El día de los reyes. From there we narrowed our studies to Perú in particular, reading our very first chapter book entirely in Spanish! Author Katie Baker’s novel Llama en Lima tells the story of how one bored llama escapes the zoo where she has been living to explore the city of Lima, Perú with her friends Mono and Cuy. Through the adventures of this daring trio, students were able to investigate interesting cultural and historical details about food, immigration, and society in Perú. Additionally, they acquired a range of new vocabulary words and grammatical structures, including the present tense for regular and some irregular verbs! As a project for this book, students received their own mini stuffed llamas with which to travel around Boston, ultimately documenting their adventures with a travel log. Upon finishing the book, students also recorded book reviews in which they provided a summary of the story and spoke about their opinions of the book. Furthermore, second trimester brought a return to in-person teaching, which meant the need for vocabulary for the classroom. As a project, students designed their own ideal classrooms, recording videos to display original illustrations of their ideas. Finally, students made additions to the “Yo soy” books that they began first trimester, incorporating new vocabulary and structures from this trimester including numbers 0-100, the verbs “hay” and “gustar”, definite and indefinite articles, and of course, examples of verbs conjugated in the present tense!
Students in Novice High began the trimester by watching the documentary set in Guatemala, Living on 1. Through weekly episodes, student got to reflect on the differences in the day-to-day life of indigenous families living in rural areas of Guatemala. This viewing tied into our vocabulary focus this term, as we learned how to talk about our homes, describing each rooms and its furniture. Additionally, we focused on three main grammar points this term: stem-changing verbs, the structure “tener que + infinitivo”, as well as the near future tense. The addition of these three concepts to the student’s growing Spanish “arsenal”, culminated in the creation of two projects.
For the “La Casa Ideal” project, as students were memorized all the vocabulary surrounding the house, the different rooms, furniture and home appliances, they got to imagine what their ideal home would look like. Students were asked to think of all the activities they could do in these homes, and write about them, practicing their written skills.
Finally, students took part in the “Casa Antes de la Fiesta” project, for which they had to rally the troops to get their house ready for the big party!
First, students created a schedule fir their family and themselves, which included at least 8 chores, as well as pictorial representations of the chores, the family members and the room in which the chores had to be done.
Then, students wrote a text with a list with the chores to be done, who will do them, when and why. They had to use the structures TENER QUE, to talk about what had to be done; and IR A to talk about when the chores would be done.
Finally, students presented their plan to the class, using only their schedules, and addressing their “family members” directly. They also had to be prepared to answers questions form their family.