Quarter 3 up-date 2021

 3^rd grade:   This quarter students have been practicing vocabulary about school and their activities.  You can ask your child the following:  ¿Juegas deporte? (Do you play a sport?), ¿Tocas instrumento? Do you play an instrument?  They learned that there are 2 different verbs for our English word “to play”, one for sports (jugar), and one for instruments (tocar).  They have also learned many of their class subjects in Spanish – Math, English, History, etc.  (matemáticas, inglés, historia, ciencias, arte, español, música) They know how to tell you if an activity is fun, boring, interesting, difficult or easy (divertido, aburrido, interesante, difícil, fácil).  I’ve introduced the idea of “verb conjugation”.  They are becoming aware that you need to change verbs depending on who is doing the action.  Yo juego, tú juegas, etc.  (I play, you play, etc.)  We’ve practiced writing simple sentences in Spanish.   Science is interesting and fun.

In class we use a variety of activities to learn, reading letters and dialogues, performing their own dialogues, and practicing pronunciation through reading out loud, and through asking each other questions in Spanish.  They have filled in their workbooks up through page 41.  They also did an in-class project, where they drew their classroom, labeled the objects and then wrote in Spanish about what is in their classroom.  I usually give class time to complete their Spanish homework so that they are able to ask me questions.  If they have time, I’d encourage them to practice their vocab at home by using the Quizlet app or by getting on Quizlet on a computer at home a couple times a week for about 5-10 min.  (see below!)

 4^th grade:   This quarter the students are practicing vocabulary about school and their activities, and they are building on what they learned last year, to go more in depth, and with deeper vocabulary. We’ve talked about sports, instruments, and we’ve added more activities – playing chess, videogames, reading, listening to music (jugar ajedrez, videojuegos, leer, escuchar música).  We’ve also spent more time with how to conjugate verbs.   You can ask your child, ¿Qué te gusta hacer en tus ratos libres?  (what do you like to do in your spare time?)  The students created a weekly schedule about what they do each week, and they also did dialogues for the class asking classmates what their favorite activity is in the week. 

 5^th grade:  We went more in depth with our school schedules, in how to describe our classes in Spanish and how to tell what time their classes are.  You can ask your child when they have their classes, and have them tell you the class in Spanish and at what time.  (La clase de matemáticas es a las diez de la mañana.)   They can also use more adjectives to describe their classes and their classmates.  They know how to say what classes they like and why.  Me gusta la clase de ciencias.  Es interesante.  As they are practicing describing their classes and classmates, we are going into more detail about noun adjective agreement.  This is the idea that all nouns in Spanish are either masculine or feminine, plural or singular, and any adjective that describes it, also has to match the noun in these aspects.  La clase es divertida.  Las clases son divertidas.   We are also practicing verb conjugation in more depth this quarter.  All of this is good preparation/ foundation for next year when many will be transitioning to learning Latin and its focus on grammar.  The students did a wonderful job creating their ideal classroom based on their favorite subject.  They labeled their classroom in Spanish and then wrote in Spanish about their classroom and their favorite subject.

Want your student to practice more Spanish at home? 

Quizlet is a great place to let them practice their vocabulary.  Students are given a vocab packet each quarter that gives them the vocab lists we are working on for that quarter.  For Quarter 3, we are working through the 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 vocab lists. 

3^rd grade quizlet links:

https://quizlet.com/class/2644065/

4^th grade quizlet links:

https://quizlet.com/class/2644096/

5^th grade quizlet links:

https://quizlet.com/class/2644194/