I know I've realized that I have a lot to learn when it comes to blogging, but it is my goal for the 2014-2015 school year to keep my blog updated regularly. We'll see how this goes.
Having almost 500 students can be a bit stressful. I see each class twice a week for thirty minutes, with the exception of therapeutic learning classrooms and preschool. I've been attempting to write a curriculum that properly spirals as the kiddos advance in grades.
Preschoolers are in the Who we Are unit for IB so I am attempting to keep kiddos talking about themselves. They are learning family words. I use pictures to associate an image with a word in English and Spanish. For our family unit I also use ASL to get kiddos moving. Preschool is loving their family familia song.
Dad is papá
Mom is mamá
Family Familia
Family Familia
Brother is hermano
Sister is hermana
Family Familia
Family Familia
Grandpa Abuelo
Grandma Abuela
Family Familia
Family Familia
Tío is uncle
Tía is aunt
Family Famila
Family Famila
For each family member, I use the ASL sign (with the exception of uncle and aunt since it is a u, we modified it to use the letter "t" and do the same sign -with the letter T-as boy and girl)
Right now my kindergarten kiddos are learning about classroom objects they may see in their home classrooms, other areas of the school, or in Spanish class. Think pencil, pen, book, marker, door, chair, table. In my classroom I like to associate an action with each word because if if someone cannot remember the word itself, they tend to remember the action which actually helps them remember the actual word. We recently played telephone with our words. We sit in a huge circle and pass the item around while whispering what it is called to a neighbor. This allows the students to actually touch the items they have been seeing as well as individually practice saying each vocab word. This can be tricky because you have to have a lot of random stuff to use. The kindergartners love it.
First grade has been working with our IB attitudes and attributes and comparing them to how we are feeling. These are ways that we act and show what kind of students we are each day. We have been focusing a lot on changing the ending to an a for chicas and keeping it with an o for chicos.
Second and third grade (second is my scaffold year this year because it's the curriculum year I am currently building) are reviewing body parts from years past. They are also learning how to change singular nouns to plural. They use el and la and change them to los and las. It works well with body parts. They are learning new vocab like los hombros, las rodillas, los brazos, and las piernas. We have a song we sing for eyes, ears, mouth, nose, body, hands, and feet. We added head, shoulders, knees and toes.
Fourth and fifth grade are in the process of learning each person's new Spanish name. Everyone got to pick a name and we are introducing ourselves using these names. We will be jumping into weather review and advancement later this week.
Woo! First post of the year and we're only in week four!
