There are some exciting holidays this week while we enjoy our well deserved vacation and I don't want to forget to mention them! Yesterday, 12/28, was "El Día de los Santos Inocentes" - Day of the Holy Innocents. In Spain, this is similar to our April Fool's Day, in which children and adults alike play pranks on each other. Parents... consider yourselves lucky that I forgot to mention this to the students before break; otherwise you might have gotten some unexpected surprises yesterday! Throughout the world El año nuevo - the new year - is coming up. In Spain, the tradition is to eat doce uvas - 12 grapes - on the 12 strokes of midnight. It is a superstition that eating the grapes will lead to a year of prosperity, while not doing so will lead to a very disappointing year!
I forgot to mention BOTH of these fun traditions to students before vacation so, parents, share these fun facts with your kids! Here's to a prosperous new year!
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With the holidays fast approaching, students have been learning about how people in Spain and Mexico celebrate during this time of year. The majority of people in Spain are Catholic, so Christmas is a big focus. Many families celebrate from Christmas up until January 6th, Three Kings Day. Children in Spain receive gifts from the three kings, including candies and small presents in their shoes! Third graders made shoes this week that we will put on the windowsill on January 5th to see if the three kings will bring us a little treat! First graders travelled around the world with their classroom teachers to places like Germany, Australia, and Mexico. They learned that the Poinsettia as a Christmas plant originated in Mexico. Mrs. Haberek and Mrs. Lilly's classes made poinsettia's out of paper plates and traced hands. Fourth graders at Hope Valley watched the movie "Los Nueve Perritos de la Navidad"- Nine Dog Christmas. The entire movie was in Spanish. An entire HOUR of Spanish! They quickly realized that they were able to figure out what was going on in the movie. Second graders went caroling around the school this week. They did a wonderful job and all of the students and teachers in the building loved it. Below are videos of each class performing. The ones on youtube are unlisted so you can only view them is someone gives you the link or the video itself like I am. One of the videos is from my Google drive because it was made with the green screen and then shared with me. It is at the end of the morning announcements. Enjoy your week and I will see everyone in the New Year! ¡Feliz Navidad! 2D caroling <-- Click here for the video from 2D, note that it is also the morning announcemtns for the day. The caroling video is at the end.
Last week, first graders at Hope Valley learned about the Christmas drawing of the Spanish Lottery. It is the second biggest lottery in the world with the grand prize winner being called "El Gordo" (The Fat One). The underlying theme of the Christmas lottery drawing is "El Mayor Premio es Compartirlo" (The greatest prize is sharing it). In the spirit of sharing, students did a short writing piece on who they would share the lottery winnings with if they won El Gordo. See what some students had to say below. And feel free to watch the commercial for the lottery from 2015. Don't worry, it's not in Spanish... there are actually no words. It does a great job portraying the theme of sharing. Next week, second grade students will be caroling in Spanish around the school. I hope they have been practicing at home! They are encouraged to wear festive attire including red and green colors, Santa hats, reindeer antlers, etc. These are the dates that they will be caroling so that you can send them to school with their festive outfits if you'd like! Note that Mrs. Mello's class will be dressed in pajamas for their Polar Express celebration, so holiday themed pajamas would be perfect if you have them! Ashaway: Mrs. Pearce and Mrs. Gray --> Wednesday 12/21 Hope Valley: Ms. D'Agostino --> Tuesday 12/20 Mrs. Mello --> Friday 12/23 I will be at Ashaway School in room 404 for conferences on Monday and at Hope Valley school in room 6 on Tuesday. Feel free to pop in and say hello before or after your conference with your child's classroom teacher. You can also email me at [email protected] if you want to talk about your child but won't be at the school on the day that I am. If there is a certain time that you'd like to stop by, you can email me or leave a comment below.
We are living in an age where technology is a big part of our everyday lives and is being encorporated more and more into the education system. I see a lot of benefits to using technology in the classroom but, sometimes, it can be so frustrating. Just now, I tried to log into this blog and typed the wrong password four times! Nevertheless, I have been embracing the use of technology in the classroom. Fourth grade at Hope Valley has made puppet show videos using the greenscreen so that they appear to be at La Sagrada Familia or a bullfight in Spain. Third grade is using the chromebooks for an ongoing research project on Spanish-speaking countries. Eventually, they will create a weather forecast for their country and record it with the green screen to appear as if the are at a landmark in that country. First grade has been making a video of a book that we made together in class. Each student wrote a page and I bound it together into a book. I have used two different apps, Book Creator and Show Me, to take pictures of their pages and record the students voices as they read them. I have had varying degrees of success with this. Today I tried Show Me for the first time in Mrs. Lilly's class because Book Creator wouldn't download onto the ipad. I completed the video only to discover that, for some reason, the recorded words stop lining up with the correct page at around page 7. So frustrating! Below are links to some of the class videos that HAVE worked out as of right now and some pictures of Mrs. Zonfrilli's third grade class working on their country research. Enjoy!
Mrs. Foggo's puppet show Mrs. Ricci's puppet show Mrs. Breault's book Mrs. DiCocco's book |
La Autora¡Hola! My name is Dori Carpenter. I teach K-4 Spanish at Hope Valley and Ashaway Elementary Schools in the Chariho Regional School District. I began teaching high school Spanish in 2010 and have been teaching at the elementary level in Chariho since 2014. I studied Spanish and Secondary Education at Providence College and The University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Archives
November 2017
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