What a blessed life!: February 2014

Some nice surprises.

One of my students in Spanish 2 went to Mexico and he brought back chocolate for me. A very sweet gesture and he says that he used his Spanish to buy the chocolate! Yeah!!!! Some of them are actually trying to use their Spanish outside of class.

And one day we had a half day at school...so we played Monopoly in Spanish! One of my co-workers says that she has found 'The game of life' in Spanish. She is in Mexico right now. If I understood her correctly....I think she might come back with the game. But then again....my accuracy, when it comes to understanding Spanish, while being spoken is next to nothing....not holding my breath on this one. But I was really excited during our conversation!

Valentines Day...a little late

Passed out the candy hearts.

Tried to have the translations on the board....sorry, kinda messy.

A gift from one of my students

And on another good note...I got yellow roses from my parents.....not a bad Valentine's Day at all! Thank you to everyone who made an effort to bring lots of smiles to my life on this special day.

Technology in my life....I have come along way

If you knew me back in the day, like most of my students, I was very adamant about not having a cell phone. I do not have a TV. My computer was a large sturdy desktop with so many cords I needed to label each one and safe guard the instructions for every time I moved. A technology upgrade was upon my horizon....and it has changed the way I view teaching completely for the better.

I look around and notice how things have changed in the past year. At school I am using an iPad, Mac book air, and a SMART board. On top of that I have purchased Air server to connect them all. I'm uploading documents to my Google Drive so they can be uploaded to my Noteability and CloudOn. My pictures are loaded to my DropBox and I'm making MPEG4's through Garage Band so my students can load my songs onto their iTunes. Two weeks ago, our school's server went down. And I showed the secretary how she could use her Smart phone to get to Gmail, so she could still communicate with parents. Last week, I Facetimed with a student who was unable to make it to class and she did not want to miss a lesson.

On Friday, during first period, a teacher called me up because she was having difficulty while trying to connect her iPad to the SMART board by using Airserver. This is what my conversation might have sounded to my students. ME "You double press that side button on the black outer trim on the iPad." Pause. ME "You then see this bottom bar come up and you swipe it to the right." Pause. ME "You then find the circle with the square inside and a triangle inside the square. Then press that icon." Pause. ME "Then you find your name and slide the circle thingy to the right." "A code should come up."

When I was done the students were amazed and a comment came up. "Senorita...., teachers are calling you for iPad advice? I don't know if that is scary or sad."

Whatever it is, I'm thinking 'technology adviser' might have to be added to my resume, which will bring a smile to my face every time I think about how far I have come.

Past tense- El Pretérito

On the Smart board I had the -AR, -ER, and -IR verb conjugations for my visual learners.

Noticed that I tried to use the colors to match my pronoun colors on the board.

Gave them each paint cards to match the colors for my visual and kinesthetic learners.

Verbally we said them out loud for my verbal learners and auditory learners.

I asked them questions in the 'tú' form. They had to write the answers in the 'yo' form

1. I bought fuel. (Did not have time to look up 'fuel' in Spanish)
2. I prepared the taco.
3. I decorated my ? (home?) (And yes, I now notice the student has 'me' instead of 'mi'.)
4. I drank the milk.

1. I decorated the computer last night. ( I know the 'el' is suppose to be 'la')
2. I talked with my boyfriend last night. (Novio is spelled wrong)

1. I bought Chipotle last night.
2. I prepared the bread last night.
3. I decorated my car last night.
4. I talked with my friends last night.

Long Possessive Adjectives for Spanish 2

Made 11 sets of each: Male/Singular, Male/Plural, Female Singular, Female Plural.

With English translation on the back.

For each of the pronouns.

Red- Yo
Blue- Tú
Orange- Él, Ella, Ud.
Green- Nosotros
Purple- Vosotros
Yellow- Ellos, Ellas, Uds

Had to organize all the sets as I made them....so I would not get confused.

One complete set

Then I laminated them so they would last forever. Too bad our department head only wanted to spend a short amount of time teaching this (one day). But it was well worth it. Afterwards we made sentences on the desk while using them. Very multi-sensory!

Here they are putting the adjectives to action!