November 12th, 2010
Dear Spanish Class Parents,
Next week we our having our last four Spanish classes before ending with school wide presentations on Monday and Tuesday, the 22nd and the 23rd. This weekend students who are behind have to decide whether the pass or fail the class; or, if they are doing well, whether they pass or achieve a grade of outstanding. There are three conditions for passing the class:
1) Students must be sufficiently on task—or at least not disruptive—during our four sessions a week. Everyone has seen many of their grades in this respect already; and so far, everyone is passing in this regard.
2) Students must, at minimum, complete individual illustrations for all of the alphabet icons, labeling them correctly with the gender and the alphabet letter on each drawing. Most students are passing at this level, but some students are failing for one of two reasons—either the student hasn’t finished all of the letters yet, or the student is labeling the picture incorrectly, writing the letter “R” on a page with a picture of a sponge for example, instead of “S.” You might want to check each page in your student’s workbook this weekend to make sure that all the letters of the alphabet are complete and that each letter matches the animal icon drawn. A packet with outstanding examples of student work for each letter is included with this letter. You can also see all of the examples in the packet on the class webpage at http://spanishforpoets.blogspot.com.
3) Students must pass an oral spelling test covering all of the letters, genders, and animal icons next week. On the test, students will be told only the name of the letter and the name of the animal. They have to fill in the correct gender by memory. This will be easy if they focus on only memorizing which animals are feminine as there are very few feminine animal icons on our list. So, 1/3 of the test next week is spelling the letters correctly (a, be, ce, de, e, efe, ge, hache, etc.), 1/3 is labling the gender correctly (el, la, los, or las), and 1/3 is spelling the animal name correctly when it is heard.
In order to get a grade of “outstanding” rather than “passing,” students must also complete imaginative association pictures for each of the numbers 1 through 15, one page of notes or a picture for the numbers 16-19, and one picture for the number 20. They must also pass a spelling test on the numbers 1-20. Any mistakes in this area may be compensated for by advancing into the geography series.
This class established a basic introduction to Spanish phonetics for students who demonstrated that they lacked this knowledge on a pretest at the beginning of the year. Unlike English (where speaking and spelling are two different things), speaking and spelling work together perfectly in Spanish. Words are spelled exactly the way they sound. That is why we lay a strong foundation in the alphabet in Spanish before advancing into lots of vocabulary, verbs, and conjugations. Every verb in Spanish can be changed with one or two letters to mean over 120 things in Spanish. With a strong foundation in the alphabet it is possible to master this later on; without it, it’s very challenging for non-native speakers.
Please sign and return this letter so that I know that you have received it.
Sincerely, Signed:_________________________________
Señor Apache For Student:___________________________________
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