Lower School
New to Anacapa this year is Conversational Spanish for the Lower School, which I have taught. The students made a lot of progress, and it has been a very fun class. I can’t believe that it’s already the end of the school year. The seventh and eighth graders started with learning basic vocabulary using mini cuentos (mini stories). Each story had three objectives—culture, functions, and grammar. For example, in the story El
muchacho pastor (The Shepherd Boy), the cultural objective was the family; the functional objectives included describing emotions and feelings, reacting to comical situations, stating where one lives, and chronology with units of time; and the grammatical objectives included first and third persons, present tense, and gender-number agreement. The students were very engaged, especially when they enthusiastically acted out the characters of the stories! Over the course of the year, other basic vocabulary such as parts of the human body, greetings, and lots of other daily words were covered. I hope this class increases the students’ interest in continuing to study a second language because it is so very important.
~~ Hugo Macario
Upper School
Not that there is an official competition yet, but the Spanish classes certainly turned out to be more generous than the Italian classes this year!
Anacapa Upper School students choose between two foreign languages offered on campus—Italian taught by Suzie Sichi and Spanish taught by Hugo Macario. Both languages are taught using a method called TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), which emphasizes acquisition through comprehensible input. It is intentionally a low-stress approach to language because this is how research has shown that the brain best stores and uses language to communicate. Students build up a significant and relevant vocabulary base, plus learn to understand and convey ideas in both spoken and written form, while grammar is acquired gradually. We have found that one of the wonderful things about this method—besides its great success rate—is that it leaves lots of room for enrichment. The culture, geography, customs, and traditions of the countries where the languages are spoken are well integrated into their courses, and the students have opportunities to be very creative as well. That’s where the generosity issue comes in.
In Suzie’s Italian classes, the students cook each Thursday, but though tempting cooking smells waft through the campus, only if you are in the class or very fortunate do you get to have a taste. In contrast, the Spanish classes shared their creative skills with all the school after students in each level of Spanish wrote, filmed, and edited a short movie in Spanish with English subtitles. The films had engaging plots, dramatic moments, and significant humor, and the results screened during three recent Breakfast Clubs were really impressive! In addition, the Cinco de Mayo celebration that Hugo organizes is both culinary and musical enrichment (also enjoyed by all), so he has definitely increased the language classes’ opportunities to share, and the Italian students have taken notice! They are already talking about the films they want to make at the beginning of next year, and they are also considering an all-school feast! Stay posted on this friendly, healthy, and tasty competition!
~~ Suzie Sichi