11/30 - class items, definite vs indefinite articles, plurals

1. check tarea, go over WBpp41, 42, 46
1.5 possessives: no apostrophe in Spanish!!! To say "Dan's book" you have to say "the book of Dan" "El libro de Dan".
2. work with prepositions
3. Class items, name, use indefinite (a, some) articles and definite (the) articles. Make plural

La tarea: list items in your backpack. "Hay un libro, tres plumas y un cuaderno en mi mochila. Tambien hay muchas hojas de paper, ........"

11/29 - get back into Spanish day

1. Discuss how students used Spanish over break.
2. Review classroom items via a few games.
3. Review prepositions
4. Use prepositions. You MUST use the verb "estar" with locations!
5. Textbook: p108, describe the location of students in the pics.

La tarea: Workbook pages 41and 42 ( should be already done, but if not, do it), and page 46.

11/19 - Oral, One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song

1. One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song - translate the lyrics, watch 2 versions of the song.

2. Orals while the rest of the class makes "Feliz dia de Gracias" cards for their favorite teachers.

La tarea: Try to use Spanish in your real life!!

11/8 - Prepositions

1. review poema
2. discuss use of prepositions, most of the ones in the poem need a "de" after them to compare the relative locations of 2 items/people. For example: La bandera esta cerca de la profesora. or: Juan esta delante de Anita. DO NOT USE DE WITH Sobre, en, aqui, alli.
3. We practiced stating the relative positions of items and people in the class.
4. Game: yesterday, students wrote sentences describing their position in the classroom. Today, I read them aloud and students had to ID who it was.
5. Workbook p42/Orals

La tarea: Workbook p42. ORALS WILL BE PRESENTED TOMORROW!

11/17 - Silent Study Day

Students worked silently the whole hour. The following is homework if not completed in class:

1. p 100 - translate the paragraph that the guy is saying.
2. p.101 - translate 5 sentences
3. p. 102-103 - translate THE WHOLE THING.

If you did the other activities in class, we will go over them tomorrow and you will be prepared.

Hopefully we will have some better behavior tomorrow and we can move on to fun activities again.

Silent Study Day tomorrow - 11/17

Due to unacceptable behavior during and after the quiz, this class will have a silent study day tomorrow. Many students behaved disrespectfully, and I prefer to try to deal with these issues in class. However, I will be writing referrals tomorrow and in the future for this kind of disrespectful and disruptive behavior (not working, hands on other students, using electronics, disobeying my requests). It is not fair to the students who are trying to learn for me to have to constantly ask students to follow the rules and get to work.

I realize that there are respectful and appropriate students in this class and I am sorry they are being punished too. However I think they will appreciate the quiet work atmosphere tomorrow, and hopefully the good future classroom environment. I will be notifying parents of some disrespectful students in the hopes that this may help alleviate the situation as well.

Gracias,
Sra. Phipps

11/16 - prepositions, vocab practice

1. prepositions poem practice. Remember, oral presentation is on Friday!!
2. Vocab practice. We played a game to review vocab, then had a quiz.

La tarea: Workbook p41

11/15 - estar and vocab, quiz tomorrow!

1. Check tarea
2. review estar, do p.44 in workbook to practice
3. Poem - prepositions (see sidebar)
4. Video - prepositions rhyme (NOT the same as ours0
Conjugations Back a much awesomer teacher than I am doing a great video to teach conjugation.

5. Vocab practice - memory game

La tarea: Study vocab list from strip and mi=my, tu=your, de=of/from, Donde=where, hay=there is/there are

11/12 - Plurals and estar

1. (text p110) To make a noun plural, you first need to change the article. el becomes los, la becomes las, un becomes unos, and una becomes unas.
Then, if the noun ends in a vowel, just add on an "s". If the noun ends with a consonant, add "es". Ejemplo: el libro = los libros, la carpeta = las carpetas, el papel = los papeles.

If the noun ends in a "z", when you add the "es" you need to change the "z" to a "c". el lapiz = los lapices.

2. We also went over the ocnjugation of "estar" on page 107 of the text.

3. Students made all their flashcards plural.

La tarea: (maybe finished in class) Workbook pp 40 and 45.

11/10 - -ar verb review, ser/estar, new vocab

1. Esponja - ser/estar
2. pass back quizzes, -ar verb review for retake tomorrow.
3. using flashcards, practice new vocab.

La tarea: study for retake on quiz: pronouns, -ar verb conjugation

BONUS POST - Ser vs. Estar

Ser and estar are taught many different ways. If a student has a method that works for them, they should use it! At our school, the Spanish 2 teachers have agreed that we will offer the same memorization techniques. The standard technique is:

SER:
TOPPNIC
Time
Origin
Possession
Profession
Nationality
Inherent Characteristic

ESTAR:
HELPS
Health
Emotion
Location
Progressive tense
civil Status

When I was in school, SER and ESTAR were taught differently, and I offer this technique to my students as well. I was taught that SER is used for things that are mostly permanent and that cannot be changed or only with tremendous difficulty, and ESTAR is used for things that are mostly temporary (with 2 notable exceptions). I know you can argue these and find all sorts of reasons it doesn't work, but you just have to go with it!

Using the TOPPNIC and HELPS categories to provide examples, you can see how this works:

TIME cannot be changed, it goes on its own merry way
ORIGIN is where you are from, can't change that
PROFESSION is hard to change, requires training, learning curve, whatever.
POSSESSION is hard to change, what's mine is mine
NATIONALITY is hard to change, you'd have to move, take a citizenship test, learn another language, etc.
INHERENT CHARACTERISTIC short of surgery, hard to change. Even though you can color your hair, it still grows out in your natural color. Change can happen very slowly on it's own time, you can't do anything to move it along. As I always like to say, "once an idiot, always an idiot."

HEALTH changes quickly, you get sick you get better.
EMOTION changes very easily, especially in the teen years.
LOCATION is one of the exceptions. In some ways, location is very temporary, I get up and move easily. But estar is also used to locations like Denver is in Colorado. Denver is not going anywhere, but it's a location so it uses estar.
PROGRESSIVE TENSE by definition is changing, it is happening right now but subject to instantaneous change.
CIVIL STATUS is the other exception. This means anything you could get a certificate for the government for: birth (being alive), death (being dead), married, divorced.

I hope that helps! email me with questions

11/9 - -ar verb quiz, ser/estar, new vocab

1. Quiz
2. ser and estar - studied the differences.
3. Start making flashcards for new classroom vocabulary, spanish on one side, pictures on the other.

La tarea: finish making flashcards.

11/8 - -ar verb conjugation and answering questions

1. Esponja - answering questions
2. 2 Oral presentations
3. Workbook - p 34 and 37, work alone then go over together.
Students seem to understand the idea of conjugating verbs, they are just not applying it very well in communication. We will work on this even more.

La tarea: quiz tomorrow (details after this), bring in 32 BLANK slips of paper to make flashcards with. If you are bringing index cards, please cut them in half!!!

The quiz tomorrow is over pronouns and -ar verb conjugation. Any -ar verb is fair game! It will be worth 15 points: 4 for identifying the correct pronoun (ex. You-all = Uds./vosotros, Marcos and Carmen = ellos), 6 for conjugating an -ar verb in all forms (patino, patinas, patina, patinamos, patinais, patinan), and 5 for conjugating verbs for the people specified (Sofia (bailar) = baila, tu y yo (escuchar) = escuchamos). Make sure you know your pronouns and verb endings!!!!

11/5 - Presentaciones orales

1. Oral presentations
2. Finish translating pp76-77, present in class.

La tarea: None!

11/4 - Oral presentations, then start translating pp76-77

1. Oral presentations
2. Translate pp 76-77

La tarea: none

11/3 - -ar verbs, presentation practice

1. Esponja
2. Turn in pen pal letters
3. Prepare for presentations
4. -ar verb game using clickers
5. see grades on common exam.

La tarea: Prepare for oral presentation tomorrow or Friday.

11/2 - Pen pal letter turn in, -ar verb conjugation and use, Oral presentation for Thurs and Fri

1. Esponja - hablar de tus clases
2. Turn in pen pal final letters.
3. Hablar - preguntas personales Act 9 p80, Act 20 p88.
4. Workbook p33 together
5. Verb conjugation practice
6. Assign oral presentation for Thursday and Friday

La tarea: Write your script, start practicing saying it.

Presentación Oral – jueves y viernes el 4-5 noviembre
Escribes 6-8 frases de tu horario y tus clases. También hablas a la clase. Describes una clase en particular. Tienes que incluir (to include) toda la información aquí:
- ¿Cuántas (how many) clases tienes?
- ¿En qué hora tienes la clase de que hablas? y ¿qué clase es?
- ¿Quién enseña la clase?
- ¿Cómo es el profesor/la profesora? (2 adjectivos)
- ¿Cómo es la clase? (2 adjectivos)
- ¿Qué necesitas para la clase? (por lo menos 3 cosas)
- ¿Qué haces en la clase? (2 actividades, verbos conjugados)
- ¿Te gusta la clase o no?
10 puntos para la presentación oral (la pronuciación es importante!)
10 puntos para la parte escrita (written)
10 puntos para escuchar a los otros estudiantes (escribir de ellos)
Unas palabras: alto/a = tall, bajo/a = short, rubio/a = blond, ruidoso/a = loud. loco/a = crazy, fabuloso/a = fabulous, joven = young, viejo/a = old

11/1 - Mi horario, review of -ar verbs

1. Esponja - -ar verbs
2. Write out your schedule in grid form.
3. Q&A over schedules.
4. Study groups - pen pal letters

La tarea: turn in final version of pen pal letter tomorrow.

Extra credit was due today, but only 1 student turned it in. Sorry folks!