Happy 2016! I am very pleased with the great things that are happening with our Elementary Spanish program. There are four teachers that cover the grades K-3rd in the seven elementary schools. Our successes come from our hard work and collaboration. We are definitely better as a team rather than individuals. I cannot wait to see what we are going to achieve in 2016!
One area of growth that I have seen this year is our focus on including more culture in our lessons. I definitely believe that we have achieved that goal and even exceeded our expectations. Our students have learned a little history and geography, they've made crafts, they've talked about holidays traditions, and they've listened to authentic music and watched videos in Spanish. Some of our students are even so interested they have gone to the library to check out books on the countries we are talking about! That's exciting!
We were recently awarded a $400 grant to buy books in Spanish from the Madison Street Festival Committee. That was super exciting! Books are a very effective way of introducing and reinforcing vocabulary. We are so thankful that we are going to be able to build up our library of Spanish books to use with our students.
On February 6th we will again be participating in the Madison City Schools Ed Camp. Teachers from Madison and beyond give up their Saturday for the opportunity to collaborate and to grow professionally. Ed Camp is completely teacher led and teacher driven. We are looking forward to sharing our ideas with our colleagues. It will be a great time for us to share the wonderful things that we are doing with our students and to also get new ideas from what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.
We are also muy, muy excited to have the opportunity to attend the Southern Conference of Language Teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina on February 19-20th. Teachers from all over attend this conference and it's going to be an excellent opportunity for us to learn from what top world language teachers are doing in their classrooms. I know that we are going to come back refreshed, recharged, and ready to to put into action what we learned.
So, it is easy to see that 2016 is starting off where 2015 ended...in a GREAT PLACE!!!
I hope everyone has been getting the newsletters I've been sending to the classroom teachers. I send them out at the end of the month. Be looking for the next one at the end of January.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.
Gracias,
Senora Jones
One area of growth that I have seen this year is our focus on including more culture in our lessons. I definitely believe that we have achieved that goal and even exceeded our expectations. Our students have learned a little history and geography, they've made crafts, they've talked about holidays traditions, and they've listened to authentic music and watched videos in Spanish. Some of our students are even so interested they have gone to the library to check out books on the countries we are talking about! That's exciting!
We were recently awarded a $400 grant to buy books in Spanish from the Madison Street Festival Committee. That was super exciting! Books are a very effective way of introducing and reinforcing vocabulary. We are so thankful that we are going to be able to build up our library of Spanish books to use with our students.
On February 6th we will again be participating in the Madison City Schools Ed Camp. Teachers from Madison and beyond give up their Saturday for the opportunity to collaborate and to grow professionally. Ed Camp is completely teacher led and teacher driven. We are looking forward to sharing our ideas with our colleagues. It will be a great time for us to share the wonderful things that we are doing with our students and to also get new ideas from what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.
We are also muy, muy excited to have the opportunity to attend the Southern Conference of Language Teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina on February 19-20th. Teachers from all over attend this conference and it's going to be an excellent opportunity for us to learn from what top world language teachers are doing in their classrooms. I know that we are going to come back refreshed, recharged, and ready to to put into action what we learned.
So, it is easy to see that 2016 is starting off where 2015 ended...in a GREAT PLACE!!!
I hope everyone has been getting the newsletters I've been sending to the classroom teachers. I send them out at the end of the month. Be looking for the next one at the end of January.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.
Gracias,
Senora Jones