Archive for 'Spanish'
A Big Enthusiastic “Hola” from Pedro the Spanish Teacher
This is my fifth year running the Spanish program here at MES, and I am so happy to be working with your kids. You probably all know that in my other life I am a theatre guy, so I try to make our Spanish classes as dramatic and physical as I can.
In the 3/4 class we are learning good accents, some basic vocabulary like colors and numbers and body parts, and playing games like “see how big a smile you can have while speaking,” (makes Spanish sound
better!) and “Simón Dice” (simon says) and “Adivina Qué Color” ( a color-guessing game with my juggling scarves.)
In David’s class, we are conjugating verbs, and we’re studying different kinds of being with the verbs “ser” and “estar,” and a useful tense called the “progressive” so that the students can say things like “I am thinking,” or “We are listening.” We do an elaborate Spanish roll call every day and then we play a game about who is wearing what: they have to REALLY LISTEN because I am speaking just as fast as a native would speak to them in some far-off country.
In the Junior High, these days we are talking about the past. How to construct sentences using past tense verbs, and how to talk about past time as we do in English with, for example, “many years ago.”
In all the classes my main goal is to encourage the students to speak with good accents, and to get them to enjoy speaking and understanding a new language. I keep my eye on the prize: which is: these kids love Spanish, and they go on to high school with beautiful Spanish verbs and nouns just bubbling out of them.
Posted: October 17th, 2008 under Spanish.