Friday is midterm.  Can you believe it has gone by so quickly?

This week we will be playing pictionary and vocabulary BINGO.  Students will begin instructing their peers by "reading" symbols out loud to their peers.  We will begin learning vocabulary for our next story.

Last week students learned a story about a boy named Pablo and a hungry monkey.  Then, they created their own ending to the story.  Each day one or two groups are presenting the story to the class.  They should be done by the end of this week.

Each group comes to the front of the room, sets the stage, selects actors and then narrates their story while the actors follow along.  It has been hilarious to see some of the solutions the students have come up with, and exhilarating to watch students understand what they are being asked to do.

We have begun taking notes, although they do not look like what the students were expecting.  The vocabulary notes define the words with symbols and drawings rather than English words.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  One of the biggest reasons is that many words have approximate translations, but not exact translations.  Another very large reason for t ...

We've been having a lot of fun so far this year.  We have learned over 100 words in Spanish by using and reusing them in various contexts.  We have played relay races and hangman, taken two quizzes, and earned a lot of participation points.  As of last Friday students started taking on the role of teacher, asking their peers to follow prompts they had written incorporating the vocabulary we have learned so far.  I have seen a lot of students taking risks, getting creative, and really stepping out of their comfort zone.  I am so proud of everybody.

This week we will be getting vocabulary lists for the words we have learned so far (there still won't be any English) as well as learning a new series of words.

So far classes are going exceptionally well.  Students have picked out their Spanish names, and taken their first quiz.  The results were fantastic!

This week will look very similar to the previous two weeks.  Students are beginning to speak and to write in Spanish, but for the most part they will continue to demonstrate knowledge by following commands in Spanish.

We are working on basic vocabulary and following simple commands.  Last week students learned and/or reviewed 50 words.  You may like to see if they can ask you to do anything in Spanish.  Don't be worried if they can't yet.  Remember that as far as the students are concerned they are still in the infancy stage of speaking Spanish, which means they can understand far more than they can say.

It takes babies approximately 3 years to become truly fluent in their first language, and even then they have not mastered some of the more intricate details such as irregular words (foot and feet for example), all of the verb tenses, etc.  And that is after hearing that language every day for every waking hour.  While our students have taken Spanish class every year that they have been at Stargate, it has not been a core class until they reached 7th grade.  Their exposure has been several hours of language over the course of a mont ...

This week's schedule will be different than students' normal schedules as we will be testing in the morning every day.  Students will rotate through their core classes in the afternoons.  Monday is a normal schedule.

Tuesday students will go to their A-Day specials class in the morning, then their testing room until lunch.  After lunch, they will report to their first academic class of the day - section one, then to section two, and finally section three (second and third academic classes.)  There will be a brief assembly in the multi-purpose room at 2:30.

Wednesday students will go to their B-Day specials class in the morning, then to their testing room until lunch.  After lunch they will go to section four, followed by an assembly in the social studies/language arts room.

Thursday students will go to their A-Day specials class in the morning, then their testing room until lunch.  After ...