Spanish classes engage middle schoolers in learning basics through creative assignments

In eighth grade Spanish, students began the quarter with a unit called "LA COMIDA," meaning "THE FOOD." They learned to discuss their likes and dislikes, order in a restaurant, and describe their food. One of the questions they worked on was, "¿Qué te gusta comer? / What do you like to eat?" Their assignment involved creating a Google Slides presentation with "Me gusta / I like" and "No me gusta / I don't like" statements accompanied by pictures or GIFs representing each food item. Students then presented their sentences to the class for practice speaking in Spanish. Señora Aldridge reported that they all did "un trabajo fabuloso / a fabulous job. "

In seventh grade, the first unit of the quarter was titled "Yo soy / I am," where students learned to describe themselves using adjectives. In Spanish, nouns are either masculine or feminine, and adjectives must agree with the noun in gender and number. This means if an adjective describes a feminine noun, it must be feminine as well; if the noun is also plural, the adjective will be feminine and plural too. Students completed an assignment creating a Google Slides presentation with "Yo soy / I am" and "Yo no soy / I am not" statements along with corresponding pictures or GIFs. They presented these sentences to the class for Spanish-speaking practice. "Another great experience and it was so much fun to see how the students view themselves! I was very impressed with the students’ pronunciation of our Spanish words," Señora Aldridge said.

In sixth grade, students started by re-learning some basics of Spanish since their last class with Señora Aldridge had been in first grade. The first unit covered El Alfabeto / The Alphabet, Los Colores / The Colors, and Los Números 0-100 / The Numbers 0-100. An assignment required them to color doce corazones / 12 hearts according to Spanish color words written under each heart. Señora Aldridge mentioned there were also assignments focusing on recognizing Spanish number words: "We also had a few assignments where the students had to work on recognizing the Spanish number words. "

"¡Estoy muy orgullosa de todos de mis estudiantes! / I am very proud of all my students," said Señora Aldridge.