October Spanish News from Ms. Blink

Attention K-4 parents: If you would like to help your student  with their Spanish at home, just email me and I will reply with a list of the words being studied in both languages. 

Kindergarteners have finished their color unit and are moving on to school supplies.  They really enjoy playing “hot potato” to pass items around while saying the word.  It has helped them recall quite a bit.  We have pretty well mastered the sign of the cross and have begun the first couple lines of the Our Father.

1^st  grade students will be finishing their colors unit with an assessment on Tuesday.  Our next unit will be school supply words with a couple new words in addition to last year’s list.  It is great to hear this class pray together at the beginning of each session; they have become rather fluent with the Our Father.

2^nd graders have finished both their color and supply units!  We are moving onwards and upwards towards numbers 0-30 followed by calendar.  During our last class, we discussed numbers we already knew and learned how to identify patterns in how the numbers are said to help predict what the next one will sound like.  The students are putting their prior knowledge to work and it’s paying off for them!  We continue to start each class with the Our Father.  I have lately been encouraging the students to have an intention in mind when we pray to help make the prayer more personal to them.

3^rd grade has finished a long unit over maps and symbols to cover their geography benchmark.  We discussed what symbols are and how a map legend is used.  Cardinal directions were also a key focus.  We made up our own symbols for house, store, railroad, river, ocean, and street to finish and completed a mapping worksheet to assess.  The next unit we are starting is over school supply words.  Many of these words should be at least vaguely familiar to the students.  We will be adding a couple new words to keep things interesting.

4^th graders have finished their unit on landforms and have moved on to school supplies vocabulary.  Many words will be familiar from years past, but there will be a couple new words to spice things up.  We will also look at the beginnings of simple sentences such as, “I have the pencil.” 

5^th  grade is in the middle of a unit over school supplies words and colors with the verb “to have.”  We are working on building sentences such as, “He has the blue folder.”  Our focus is on how to make adjectives modify nouns in Spanish.  They will have a test on this information in the next couple of weeks.  Check with snapgrades for updates on the exact date.  After their test we’ll briefly study el dia de los muertos, the Mexican holiday that celebrates All Souls’, before moving on to the next unit.

6^th  graders have already tested over their first unit about school supplies and colors in conjunction with question words and prepositions.  These test scores are on snapgrades.  We are currently discussing el dia de los muertos, the Mexican celebration of All Souls’ Day before starting the next unit.  

7^th grade is preparing to take their first test of the year on October 29^th over famous Hispanics, months, seasons, days, and numbers 0-30.  Knowing this basic information will serve as a good springboard to more conversational things in chapter 1.  After their test we will briefly discuss el dia de los muertos, the Mexican celebration of All Souls’ Day. 

8^th graders are preparing to take their chapter 2 test on November 2.  This test will conclude our review of last year’s material.  Please remind your student to study for this test as it has been a while since we last met for Spanish.  After throwing in a little culture with dia de los muertos, Mexico’s celebration of All Souls’, we will continue on to chapter 3.  This chapter will deal with classes, schedules, and telling time.