World Language Department
Region 18 Winter 2017
Chinese Mr Wang
Chinese I
The students have just finished learning general greetings and now are completing a new unit in Chinese calligraphy. They are learning the five styles of calligraphy and have had their first hands-on experience of practicing this ancient Chinese art dating back to thousands of years, the relevance of which is still significant in China today. I have to admit that this year’s students are the most focused group when it comes to calligraphy and they have produced master pieces that they themselves are proud of. I hope your child showed you their calligraphy writings and brags about them. As a part of our department goals this year, we are striving to build strong interpersonal communication skills, namely, listening and speaking.
Chinese II
Students are building on their Chinese I skills to talk about extended families, occupations, and activities they do together. We are building our new vocabulary, on a very large scale, and learning all relevant grammar structures, focusing on listening and speaking tasks. As a part of our push for the 21 Century Learning Skills, students are experimenting with new online presentational tools, such as screencastify and jing, thus incorporating language learning and technology. We have fully embraced Canvas as a tool of information management, test taking, and group interactions. We are also learning characters and developing skills in reading and writing basic Chinese.
NYC restaurant on Chinese New Year trip
Chinese New Year
NYC Chinese trip
Chinese III and Chinese IV
This year I am able to differentiate these two groups of students under the same themes. Students will be learning the same topics, but the mastery and proficiency levels are different, both in quantity and levels. Currently, they are learning all aspects of personal descriptions in Chinese including looks and personality, clothing and ethnicity. This is a significantly difficult task as we have moved above and beyond simple description. We have fully embraced Canvas as a tool of information management, test taking, and group interactions. We are also learning characters and developing skills in reading and writing basic Chinese.
AP Chinese
This year we have fully embraced Canvas as a tool of information management, test taking, and group interactions. Students are fully engaged in culture exploration, vocabulary building, extensive listening and speaking, reading authentic materials and writing in characters. It’s a pretty tough uphill battle to transition to full character writing and 100% target language, but the students are making strides.
The Ping Pong Club
Ping Pong Club has been active, attracting both boys and girls to the game. Participation has never been this strong since it started years ago. Emily Tan is our Ping Pong Club president and she is rather devoted in taking attendance and helping with the arrangement. Encourage your child to try it out. In addition, Mr. Raucci and Mr. Wang organized a holiday Food Drive with the game of Ping Pong, where a kid brought in a canned food to challenge them in a game of Ping Pong during lunch time on Tuesdays and Thursdays until Christmas.
Spanish Throughout the Grades
Elementary Spanish Señora Tackett
Elementary students are off to a great start in Spanish class this fall. Students have been practicing communication through conversation, the discussion of the calendar, and activities related to the body and food units of study. The third graders are quite enthusiastic and demonstrating understanding! They are all eager to participate and practice communication. They are learning through song and movement, games, and repetition. It was noted that many with front teeth can do “the tongue wiggle” already! Students enjoyed making handprint “gatitos” (kitties) integrating the body vocabulary while learning about the structure of language. Students also worked cooperatively to create scarecrow posters.
Fourth grade students have played games to practice vowel sounds in order to support their reading, writing, and pronunciation. They created drawings depicting otoño (fall) and practiced describing holiday themed items by color. We have compared and contrasted American and Spanish holidays, expanding our view of the world, and through the lens of masks for El Día de los Muertos! Currently 4th graders are working on creating their own menus, while using the December calendar as a springboard for discussion related to holiday traditions and culture, most recently La Posada in Mexico.
Fifth grade students focused on review of conversational phrases through role playing in the classroom and then recorded a conversation in the computer lab using Vocaroo. I encourage students to continue using Vocaroo on their home PC to practice speaking and listening if they enjoyed recording at school. Students also reviewed vocabulary related to the body and practiced listening/following directions to draw figures. Students worked cooperatively to interview friends about their favorite candy and learned to share the likes of others. Fifth graders are building vocabulary of high frequency words to assist them in writing simple sentences. They are presently applying their knowledge of food vocabulary to express their likes and dislikes, as well as describing food items. All students in grades 3, 4, and 5 will participate in a fiesta prior to the holiday break where we will practice language in an authentic manner related to food and manners, as well as through music.
Grade 6 Spanish with Señora Carrion
Spanish 1 grade 7 Mrs. Tyler
Spanish 1 Grade 8 Señora Russell
Spanish 2 Grade 8 with Señora Russell
From Costa Rica we flew to Argentina for the next adventure. Here we discover the vastness of this South American country, with icebergs, penguins, deserts, mountains, cattle ranches and the exciting city of Buenos Aires where the tango originated and the Pope once lived. Students became familiar with vocabulary relating to being healthy and staying physically fit and planning an active day.
As Spanish 2 students they took their first midterm just like the high school students.
Preparing for High School
Spanish 2 with Señor. McGannon
They used what they learned to produce PSA'a (public service announcements)
about the the merits of good eating and regular exercise. They wrote their own
scripts and added their own voices to the presentations. We had a great time
presenting and viewing them!
Spanish 3 Señor McGannon
For the 6th consecutive year, Sr. McGannon's Spanish III classes collaborated with the Lyme Youth Service Bureau to help local families in need during the holidays. Each class
"adopted" a family and gathered items to help their family by getting certain gift items for the children. To spread the news, each student created a bilingual flyer and posted it around the school. It's one of our favorite activities and was a big success!
Spanish 4 Señor Vazquez-Caballero
Spanish classes had a fabulous start this year. The students are engaging in a class that is conducted entirely in Spanish.
Throughout the year, students will continuously develop their skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking effectively. Students will interact in both formal and informal settings by studying a variety of topics relevant to their lives. At this time, classes are studying two units related to universal AP themes: peer pressure and security in cities/communities. They are exploring these topics by reading articles and stories, viewing video clips and “soap operas,” analyzing data, and listening to songs from Spanish-speaking countries.
Spanish ECE Señor Vazquez-Caballero
AP Spanish Señor Vazquez-Caballero
Students in AP Spanish are working diligently on their goals: to become fluent in Spanish, to develop global competency skills, and to be prepared for the AP exam in May. They are developing these skills while engaging in units related to AP themes. Students have studied immigration (with connections to our election), the impact of technology on the world (such as on the family dynamic), and the right to live/die with dignity. In addition, in order to continue developing grammar skills, students have been applying grammar to different contexts; for example, they created posters to look for roommates in college (using the subjunctive) and wrote horoscopes (using future tense). Their futures look bright!
Latin - Mr. Motes
This semester in Latin Land we have been working on improving our conversational abilities with both polite phrases and questions about daily life.
Our Latin I students built some amazing togas and tunics (as well as a couple of stolas!). We had a wonderful toga parade in October, and then journeyed to other “countries” to spread the glory of the Roman empire!
In Latin II, we have been discussing the buildings of the Roman Forum and have been preparing a scale model of the Forum for presentation this month.
Latin III students have been reading modern Latin fairy tales, and will soon be writing one of their own!
In Latin IV and V, our scholars have taken their knowledge of Latin poetry and composed original dactylic hexameter for presentation.
Looking ahead, some of our students will be taking the National Latin Exams, and in the spring several will be traveling to CT State Latin Day to share in the wonders of Roman culture and language with students from across the state.
vive Roma!
French Begins in Grade Seven Mrs Tyler
First year French students have been enjoying their journey of learning a new world language! They are all so enthusiastic and have learned so much. Each class is spent with the emphasis on communication and these first year learners can already speak so well. They have been working very hard and can talk with their classmates about how they are feeling, the weather and what activities they like to do or don’t like to do. Recently they have learned how to tell time as well as classroom objects and school subjects vocabulary. With their classmates they are able to say what they need, ask what someone else needs and ask what something costs. They can also talk about their school schedule and describe their individual classes and teachers. They are so very much pleased with their progress so far this year as am I! Bien fait, mes élèves!