I would like to take this opportunity to explain what happens in Spanish Class every time your children come through door. My ultimate goal in class is to get students following directions and commands in Spanish throughout the entire class. For my students to be able to do that means they are learning the use of language structures and how to answer to them.

I’m lucky to teach children from preschool all the way to middle school, and that gives me the incredible chance to set goals in each of my classes thinking towards the future, and completing the step-by-step process of learning another language. Continue reading →

Hello, this is Ana Amaro, Spanish teacher at Stonegate and ZWMS.

Today, I would like to share with you what I do in my classes during the first and the second semesters. First semester is always hard for the kids and sometimes even for me, I have kids coming from Señora Essig´s class, kids who has been with me for 1 year already and kids totally new to Spanish; so in the first semester I try to put all of them more or less into the same level. I work with one text book but 2 different work books depending of their level.

During those first months, we learn or review the verb to be, to have, to like, regular verbs, personal pronouns, articles, feminine and masculine nouns, plural and singular, so at the end of the semester on the last day before winter break, we open our class to the parents and show them our routine in class and everything we learn about conjugation verbs. This class is totally spontaneous, I like to make them think, I challenge them, so that they understand the reasoning of everything instead to “repeating as parrots”.  At the third and fourth grade level, kids have the maturity for my class. It is amazing how fast they can learn. As an adult I think we sometimes underestimate our kid’s capabilities.

Continue reading →