Conference Week

8th grade Spanish students did the following oral MovieTalk this week:
* Dulces de Halloween which can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thU8HUVdU0U
Oral MovieTalks involve taking still shots of the animated shorts and discussing the film in Spanish. Students are asked questions regarding the plot, the thoughts/actions/feelings of the characters, and they offer their own theories about the endings/what happens next for our protagonists.

7th grade has ended their TPRS story unit which they will be showing parents during conferences in their portfolios. Below is a description of what can be expected of your children during a TPRS unit. 
TPR Storytelling (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling TPRS) is method of teaching foreign languages where a mixture of reading and storytelling help students learn Spanish in the classroom setting. The method works in three steps: 1.) Vocabulary structures are learned and are taught using a combination translation, gestures, and personalized questions. 2.) Those structures are used in a spoken class story; and finally, 3.) These same structures are used in a class reading. Throughout these 3 steps, the teacher will use a sumber of techniques to help make sure the target language is comprehensible to students; including careful limiting of vocabulary, the constant asking of comprehension questions, frequent comprehension checks and very short grammar explanations known as "pop-up grammar."

6th graders have started their unit on "El día de los muertos" (The Day of the Dead). Students watched a slideshow surrounding this major Mexican holiday, viewed music videos, and re-created authentic Mexican artifacts (calacas and mascaras).