Pioneer Elem Beginners Spanish: December 9-12, 2013

Hola parents,

Just a quick overview of what we did in class the last week in December before going to break of the T.A.L.K. program at Pioneer Elementary!

We had a lot of fun learning about the opposites and then incorporating the Christmas theme in it by having them distinguish from a big (grande) present to a small ( pequeño) present, coming in and out of the classroom to establish that outside was cold (frío) and inside was hot (caliente), etc.

The kids learned about Christmas terms in Spanish like Santa Clause (Santa Claus), snow man (hombre de nieve), gingerbread man (hombre jengibre),  Christmas Tree (árbol de Navidad) and candy cane (bastón de caramelo). I had them then draw a picture of that term and then converted the picture into an "Aguinaldo Navideño" with treats for them to take home. They even helped me decorate a small Christmas tree in the classroom and got to earn extra stars by pointing out details in the decorations themselves that they had previously learned in class. For instance, there were decorations that were different colors, shapes, quantities, and had the Christmas terms in them. Their job was to point out what they remembered learning in the past that the tree ornament contained. I was impressed in how much they were able to point out!!! I am very proud of the class and am excited to see them again on Monday January 6, 2014!

Maestra Auri

End of the year. ¡Felices Fiestas!

Hola a todo/as!

Well, we've come to the end of another great year. This year was different due to a greater group size, but every student contributed in a different way. With respect, we helped each other, and learned from each other. We had lots of great activities at TALK, and here are some of the latest pictures:

FOOD Lesson - COMIDA 

In pairs, the students asked each other which vegetables they prefered in Spanish by saying:
¿Te gusta .... o ... ? Then, they wrote down the answers. Here are some sample worksheets:

*Note ambos means both & ninguno means none of them.

Numeros Lesson + Me gusta-Mi favorito (I like- My favorite) + Animals & days of the week review

Some of the children's responses I most enjoyed reading about their preferences:

 I was very impressed with the creative book covers the students designed for their story book of preferences:

Viernes de Pachanga

Every Friday, we either learned about a new Latin American/Spanish musical rhythm or we learned about some Spanish instruments. Here are some pictures from our lesson about Colombian instruments. 

The students created: Guacharacas, Acordeones & Cajas. 

Guacharacas -   tubes with ridges

Acordeones - Accordions

Cajas - Drum-like instruments

We used these
 instruments to play vallenato

Some of the features of this particular Colombian rhythm, which we discussed in class. 

Vamos al Restaurante - Ordering at a restaurant in Spanish

Each child, randomly picked one of these roles: cocinero/a (chef), mesero/a (waiter), or cliente (customer)

Los cocineros "prepared" the food orders using homemade clay

Los meseros  took orders in Spanish, and los clientes ordered food in Spanish.

We took turns to make sure everyone had a chance to participate in a different role

Happy Holidays everyone! We'll see you next year! 2014 

Pioneer Elementary- Beginners Spanish December 2-5

Hola Parents,

Feliz Domingo! Happy Sunday! I just wanted to update you all on the enjoyable week we had. On Monday, the kids began putting together a yearly calendar. Each student had the opportunity to pick a month of their choice, preferably the month of their birthday, to decorate. This was a three-day project and was amusing to see how focused they can get when it came to decorating their favorite month!

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to incorporate the birthday theme into our lesson plan by actually celebrating two December birthdays. This worked out very well because the kids had the opportunity to practice their Spanish birthday terms during the birthday celebration. We had balloons and a "piñata" which was filled with small toys instead of candy. We even sang the birthday song in Spanish! Even Maestra Auri had a blast!

Please be on the look out next weekend for another blog on this weeks events. Christmas will be one of our themes!

Thank you parents once again and remember that there will be no class next week December 16, 2013-January 2, 2014. Class will resume January 6, 2014.

Maestra Auri

Korematsu Intermediate Spanish

Good afternoon Korematsu parents,
   Happy Thanksgiving! I'm hoping everyone enjoyed the delicious turkey dinners. Well it's been a long break, now its time to get back on track with classes and learning new Spanish words. This week coming up, we will be going over FOOD. I have spilt the vocabulary into three different categories: VEGETABLES, FRUITS, & LIQUIDS. At the end of the week feel free to quiz your children around the house, perhaps ask them how do you say this in Spanish. If you have any questions, comments, concerns- feel free to email me or post on this blog. As always, it's a pleasure to have your children as my students.
-Juan

Pioneer Elementary Beginners Spanish- November

Hola padres!

This month was quite exciting! Not only did the kids learn about the animals, numbers, and days of the week in Spanish; but also about SPORTS!! We did everything from imitating animals to pretending we were television characters or famous athletes. Some of the teams highlighted were the Cowboys Tony Romo, the 49ers Joe Montana, the Olympic swimmer Missy Franklin, the Los Angeles Dodgers number Kershaw, the Buffalo Bills Robert Woods, the San Jose Sharks, and FC Barcelona Lionel Messi. Incorporating sports was super successful. The kids gave a small quick presentation on why they liked certain teams/athletes and the number they represented. This allowed them to remember the numbers in Spanish because they had to connect back to their favorite teams. I loved to watch how their eyes lid up every time I mentioned their favorite teams.

One of the students helped me review the numbers with the class on the board by pointing, first, at the number itself and said it in English. Then, pointed at the word in Spanish of that same number and said it in Spanish out loud for the other kids to hear. This worked out better than I thought because they all began repeating the numbers after him :')

Muy buen trabajo chicos!

Also, now that they are familiar with the days of the week in Spanish, we will be writing the date on the board every morning so that each of them can practice writing the day, month, and year. This will be a great transition to the topics that we will be covering next, which are the months, days, and seasons. They are very bright and every day I get more and more amazed with the things that they express in the classroom.

Well, I hope you all have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving!!! And please e-mail me if you all have questions or suggestions.

Maestra Auri

Animales Poster Project

This week was a confirmation for me that children always work well with week projects. Instead of lecturing 30 animal names in Spanish, we created posters of animals. For three days, we worked learning 10 animal names each day in two groups: Grupo Uno & Grupo Dos. Each group had some 5+ animal vocabulary to be drawn on the poster.

The students were actively engaged in the elaboration of the posters; in addition, the capitan of each grupo had to present the poster to the class by the end of our session. On the last day of the week, we reviewed all animals, practiced their pronunciation in Spanish and classified them into categories.

The animals were presented into three different categories:


Animales de Granja (Farm animals)

Cerdo (pig)
Caballo (horse)
Pollo (little chicken)
Conejo (rabbit)
Ganzo (goose)
sapo/rana (frog)
Vaca (cow)
Cabra (goat)
Pato (duck)
Gallina (hen)
Perro (dog)

Animales del Zoologico (Zoo animals)

Jirafa (giraffe)
Zorrillo (skunk)
Oso (bear)
Mapache (raccoon)
Serpiente (snake)
Avestruz (ostrich)
Ardilla (squirrel)
Lobo (wolf)
Elefante (elephant)
Leon (lion)
Leopardo (leopard)

Animales del mar (Sea Animals)

Medusa (jellyfish)
Ballena (whale)
Pez (fish)
Camaron (shrimp)
Cangrejo (crab)
Tiburon (shark)
Delfin (dolphin)
Raya (Ray)
Pinguino (pinguin)
Calamar (squid)
Estrella de mar (starfish)
Foca (seal)
Tortuga (turtle)

Classification of animals: 

Korematsu Beginning Spanish: Noviembre

Hola padres! 

And it's already November, it feels like Halloween was just yesterday! We have had a great last  2 weeks in class. Last week we went over the different types of animals and the different environments they live in. Here are some examples:

Mascotas                 Animales de Granja              Animales acuáticos      Animales del Zoológico
(Pets)                      (Farm Animals)                      (Sea Animals)                   (Zoo Animals)
perro/dog                vaca/cow                                  ballena/whale                  girafa/giraffe
gato/cat                   gallina/chicken                          delfin/dolphin                  chango/monkey
pez/fish                    cerdo/pig                                  pescado/fish                        oso/bear
raton/mouse            oveja/sheep  

Some activities we had were ¿Qué animal soy? which was kind of like charades. The kids had a lot of fun and showed their awesome acting skills! We also had the opportunity to make animal puppets, each student picked their favorite animal. And I think their favorite one was Animal Yoga! I found a great app on my phone and we practiced some yoga moves while also practicing the animal names in spanish.                                                                  

This week we have started learning numbers starting from 1-31. Since, many of the students had some knowledge on the numbers from 1-10, we reviewed those and learned the rest until 31. Some of the activities we practiced were Tic Tac Toe Números, here the students picked the numbers they wanted on their grid. After I called out different numbers and whoever had a line across, diagonal etc won. We also decorated a "cake." We used paper plates to decorate a the imaginary cake, they wrote Feliz Cumpleaños! I had prepared recipes for them to tell them how many velas/candles they needed to decorate the cake with.

Next week we will be going over days of the week.

Que tengan un fantástico fin de semana y hasta el lunes!

-Joanna

Korematsu Intermediate Spanish

Good evening Korematsu parents,

First off I’d like to apologize for posting this blog so late… We were having technical difficulties.

I’d like to start with a short biography of myself: My name is Juan Chavarin, currently attending the University of California Davis, where I am double majoring in Biological Chemistry and Spanish.  Aside from teaching Spanish to your brilliant children, I am a swim instructor and coach for the junior Olympics swim team. I’m very passionate when it comes to teaching because it gives everyone an opportunity to learn something new and use that knowledge to be successful in the future. Being part of this program has been very self-rewarding. Your children have surprised me by how quickly they can acquire the vocabulary that is taught in their language classrooms!

These last 8 weeks we have learn simple phrases such as: “my name is ____.” To more complex things like memorizing the alphabet in Spanish, learning how to count from 1-50 and a broad spectrum of colors.

            This week we will be going over “opposites” as well as learning the vocabulary for house pets, farm, and zoo animals.

            If any of you have any questions feel free to comment on this post or contact me by email.

Thank you,

Juan

Creative writing activities - Intmdt Spanish

Hola Papas & Mamas!


This week, we had lots of fun learning about opposites. We'll keep building up on this vocabulary as we move on to describing objects, places, or persons.  Opposites or Opuestos was a key lesson for our upcoming activities. Here are a few pictures from some of the writing activities we had:

Drawings by the students describing the opposites vocabulary.

On Thursday, instead of making instruments since Friday was a holiday, we wrote a story together. Each student had been randomly assigned one of the opposite words from above. Then, each student would take a turn to use the word in a sentence that will continue their classmates' story. I helped the students to translate the rest of their sentence, so we could write the whole story in Spanish.
We also learned how to say: "Once upon a time" in Spanish: "Habia una vez." In addition, we learned extra vocabulary such as: Vampiro (vampire), piel (skin), salsa de tomate (ketchup), and others.

Here's the translation to the left side picture of the story created by the students: " Once a upon a time, a short dog, who was walking to the park, suddenly transformed itself in ketchup. Then, a cold vampire appeared and ate it. The vampire was tall and big. But, the vampire had dark intentions. The vampire flew up to the sky, and there, he ate a small dog, which he found there (we don't why?). Suddenly, because the vampire had eaten a lot, his skin became light green, and he became extremely fat. At the end, the vampire fell into a volcano. The End!

Two of the "recolectores" students, who wanted a picture with the board before they erased it. Several students have different roles & titles in Spanish in our class. The early birds are "repartidores," who hand out class materials. Others are "recolectores," who help to clean up at the end, but we take turns, so everyone can help in our class!

Pioneer Beginner Spanish recap of Week #8

Hola a todos!

This past week the kids learned about the different types of animals found in the home (pets), farm, Zoo, and under the sea. They reminded me how fun it was to be a kid again and sounding out the different animal noises. Their creativity was seen in the many ways they were able to imitate an animal of their choice. From different yoga positions posing as certain animals to racing other kids in the class pretending to be that animal with face masks! I even made two track lanes for them with tape on the carpet so they could imagine the real thing. Watching them each race with their animal masks on, hearing them make the animal sounds, and then at the end yelling what animal was at the finish line first was pretty AMAZING!!!  Below is a picture of some of our winners!!

I wish I could have taken more pictures because really everyone did such an awesome job, but my phone was not cooperating much.

For this week, we will be learning the numbers! Yay! And to help the kids remember the numbers in Spanish, I will be incorporating sports into our lesson plan. They are very smart so I am sure they will catch on to the Spanish numbers in no time specially if their favorite team player represents a certain number. If you all have suggestions as to what other activities I can use with the sports theme, please e-mail me.

Thank you so much parents!

Maestra Auri

Birch Lane, Beginner Spanish

Birch Lane, Beginner Spanish

Hola Padres!

These past three weeks have been really exciting, the kids learned many vocabulary.

The second week of October  we learned about shapes, colors. Some colors were, café, verde, azul, rojo, amarillo, blanco, negro and also different colors such as plateado (silver) and dorado (gold).  They also learned shapes for example, circulo, rectangulo, cuadro, triangulo, estrella, corazon and also shapes like trapezoide (trapezoid) and diamante (diamond). I encourage you to ask your children about what colors and shapes they learned, you would be surprised!

The third week of October we learned about school supplies. The kids learned a lot of vocabulary, such as papel (paper), regla (ruler), borrador (eraser), lapiz (pencil), tijeras (scissors), pluma (pen), libros (books), sacapuntas (sharpener) etc.

The fourth week we learned about La Familia (family members) the kids learned how to say mom, dad, brother, sister, grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt and also boy cousin/girl cousin. We also learned about directions, like arriba, abajo, izquierda, derecha, adelante and atras. We danced together while learning the directions it was a really nice experience. Once again I encourage you to ask your children about the vocabulary listed above, practicing Spanish will help them get better and better.

Family Members

Finally this past week we reviewed all the material learned from the previous weeks. Next week we will be learning about animals (farm animals, pets, zoo and sea animals). Thank you for your time and hope you had a great weekend!

October's Recap - Intermediate Spanish DAC

Hola Papas & Mamas!




We had a super busy & fun month, which ended this week celebrating the Mexican festivities of Dia de los Muertos last Friday for our Viernes de Pachanga! Here are some of the highlights of  what we learned this month!

Reviewing shapes vocabulary. The children created their own forms with pipe cleaners

Viernes de Pachanga continues every Friday, but now besides listening to different  music from some of the 44 Spanish speaking countries and learning new moves, we have been learning vocabulary related to instruments and movements. 

Creating #s with clay!

Each child had a card with the # name in Spanish

At the end, we counted the whole sequence from 0-20 together as a group.

Reviewing spelling of the #s in Spanish

Finally, the masks celebrating Dia de los Muertos in our dance led by teacher Marlene. We had to pretend being and moving like skeletons. Here's a link to the song, which also reinforces numbers' vocabulary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYyRibaMQoA

Korematsu Beginning Spanish: October

Hola padres!

These last couple of weeks have been very exciting and fun going over school supplies, family members and directions! This last week we had the whole week to review all of the areas we have covered in class already from the beginning of classes. We went over the alphabet again, and I'm very happy to say all seven of them knew the whole abecedario!

I also brought in a alphabet salsa song and we heard it there and also practiced directions like: up-arriba, down-abajo, atras-back, izquierda-left, derecha-right through dance. The kids had a great time that day :)

For family members the vocabulary was mom-mamá, dad-papá, sister-hermana, brother-hermano, grandmother-abuela and grandfather-abuelo. These were the words that were in the curriculum, but I also taught them uncle-tio, aunt-tia, cousin-female is prima, male is primo. Each student drew their family and some even wanted to know what great-grandmother was! It's bisabuela for great-grandmother and bisabuelo for great-grandfather.

This week we also had a day to review some Halloween terms like araña-spider, fantasma-ghost, vampiro-vampire, murcielago-bat and calabaza-pumpkin.

This upcoming week we will be going over animals:pets, farm, zoo and sea.
I have some fun activities planned for them!

And feel free to practice the vocabulary I added in spanish! It will keep the information fresh in their minds!

Happy Sunday

-Joanna

DAC Beginner's Spanish, Week 1 and 2

Hola a todos! Bienvenidos a español de principiantes! Hello to everyone! Welcome to beginner's Spanish! 

We are excited to have started T.A.L.K. and ready for the children to efficiently learn another language.

These few weeks have been very progressive, as you will later see how much your children have learned!

Week 1 and Week 2: introductions, commands, and numbers

So for these two weeks, our focus was to get to know each and every student, and to become a support group to learn Spanish.

We thought basic introductions were boring and decided to spice things up. So instead we passed a teddy bear, Patches, around like a hot potato, and did tutti fruity, the name chain. Things got heated as students picked up each other's names quickly. In order to see how old students were, we played games such as four corners and scavenger hunt where children learned numbers from 1-15. Some basic introductions students learned were:

Yo me llamo/My name is _______.


Tengo ____ años./I am ____ years old.


Soy un niño o una niña/ I am a boy/girl.

In order to have a great class and major participation, we decided to teach basic commands and sayings, such as:

Sientate/ Sit down

Levantate/ Stand up

Levanta la mano/ Raise your hand

Formen un circulo/ Form a circle

And of course we cannot forget to greet people bright and early in the morning. Some greetings and responses that were taught were:

Buenos días/ Good Morning

Buenas tardes/ Good afternoon

Buenas noches/ Good evening/night

Por Favor/ Please

Gracias/ Thank you

Cómo estas/ How are you

Bien/ Good

Mal/ Bad

Mas o menos/ So-so

Adios/ Goodbye

As some of you may be aware, Fridays are fun days of Pachanga (party), where students not only apply what they were taught that week but also learn about Latino culture through dancing. So watch out, you may have professional dancers by the end of this year!

These two weeks we danced merengue from Santo Domingo and la macarena from Spain. To help us learn how to dance, we taught students directions such as:

Izquierda/ Left

Derecha/ Right

Adelante/ Foward

Atras/ Backwards

Vuelta/ Turn

Keep posted for Week 3 and 4 as we discuss the alphabet, vowels, colors, and shapes! Hasta luego!