First Exam - 5th Grade

¡Hola!  Our fifth grade class will be taking their first exam next week, and I know that it can be a bit nerve-wracking to prepare for the first test.  To help reduce any fears, I wanted to give a breakdown of what will be on the test and what they need to study:

Our goals for the capítulo preliminar are that the students will have successfully learned to:

• Greet people and say goodbye
• Introduce themselves and others
• Ask and say how to spell names
• Say where they are from
• Exchange phone numbers
• Say what day of the week it is
• Describe the weather
• Respond to classroom instructions

The exam will test all four skills ~ listening comprehension, reading, writing and speaking.  There will be a listening section at the beginning of the exam with our audio program.  I will play through it twice. Next is a vocabulary section where students will be writing sentences, completing a cloze passage (filling in the blanks of a dialogue), choosing expressions that fit a situation, describing weather, and giving class instructions.  There is a true/false and short answer reading section. That is followed by a speaking section.  For the speaking part of the exam, students will go out in the hall individually and respond to basic questions in Spanish. Finally, there is a writing section of five sentences based on prompts. 

As you can see, the exam is very thorough.  We usually break up the exams into sections over two class periods so that the students will not be rushed. 

In order to be prepared for the exam, it is important that the students know their vocabulary list well, and that they are able to spell the words correctly.  Accent marks do count.  

We have covered quite a bit of ground with this first unit.  I always want to remind the students that even the best designed tests can only show aspects of what they have learned.  If they study and miss something, they have not failed: it has just shown us both an area where they need more practice.  We have had several quizzes at this point, and I feel confident that they will be able to do well on this test. I hope that as they realize how much they are able to communicate, that they will be proud of the effort that they have put into the course and excited about their progress.  As always, feel free to email me at any time!

¡Buena suerte! 

7th Grade Improv

This group of 7th graders is, without doubt, one of the most talented group of kids that I have ever had the privilege to teach!  And their improvisational skills are downright amazing.  One of the things that I have implemented this year is conversation cue cards that are passed out to each student at the beginning of class.  The students then take turns coming to the front of the class and speaking in Spanish on the theme they were given.  That is much harder than it sounds!  I have been so impressed by their courage and by their proficiency.

As if extemporaneous speaking in Spanish weren't enough, they have been practicing their singing and songwriting skills by composing their own songs for irregular verbs and performing them in front of the class!  Sadly, my videography skills are not nearly as good as their performances, and I can't post the videos of their compositions, but it has been incredibly entertaining to watch them sing and dance.

Finally, we have been practicing our own version of DEAR (Drop Everything And Read).  Once a week, all of our middle school students take about 10 minutes to read in Spanish.  We practice gisting--getting the gist of what is going on, even without knowing every single word--but we also stop every now and then to find a key word and put it on a sticky note for our door.  It is fun to read the notes and guess which book a particular word came from (Clifford, el gran perro colorado is one favorite). What is even better is seeing how all of this translates into proficiency in real life and higher test scores!