Pen Pals and Posters in Spanish

Señora Trott's Spanish 1-2 classes have started writing letters to pen pals. They will tell their pen pal about themselves, activities they like to do, how old they are and where they live. They will ask their pen pals several questions as well. Their pen pals will read the letters and write back!

Spanish 3-4 classes are creating a small poster called:   Mi mejor amigo (a). This poster will have a description of their best friend, including why they are friends and what activities they like to do together. The poster will include 3 or 4 visuals that illustrate this friendship.  Next week, 3-4 students will start writing their skits about travel to a Spanish speaking country.

Novellas & Experimental Art in French

Madame Leidhoff's students of second year French are learning the past tense. Using the new structures and vocabulary, they will be writing and dramatically presenting a six part novella.

 

Students of third year year will do interpretations, biographies and experimental art and presenting to their classmates.

Travel and Fairy Tales in Spanish

Students in Ms. Ranzolin's Spanish 3-4 class have been busy learning how to talk about airport travel. They wrote dialogues and short stories about people going on a vacation, along with beautiful illustrations. In Ms. Ranzolin's Spanish 5-6 class, students wrote and illustrated their own fairy tales demonstrating their knowledge of the past tenses in Spanish.

"Entrevista y Retrato" Project

Spanish 5-6 students in Señor Lawhead's classes completed their Interview and Portrait projects.  After interviewing their partner and writing a paragraph with the information, students drew a portrait of him/her.  This fun activity teaches Unit 1:1 vocabulary and allows some truly gifted artists to shine.  It also creates a lot of hilarity (humility?) among those of us not blessed with artistic skills!
 

EntrevistaRetrato from Richard on Vimeo.

Test Dividers to Insure Security

In part of a formal testing environment, students in Spanish 1-2 and 3-4 with Profe Bañuelos use prefabricated cardboard dividers whenever taking a test or quiz. This is done in hopes to reduce the temptation to cheat from others. SRHS's academic policy calls for an automatic U if a student is caught cheating or giving answers.

Speaker Encourages Bilingualism

Dr. Jacobson's 6th period classes and many other World Languages classes welcomed Mr. G. Bogart from the U.S. Department of Commerce.  The topic was the importance of bilingualism in today's world and he shared his experiences in Colombia and Mexico as an officer of the United States government.  Mr. Bogart is fluent in Spanish and speaks a bit of other languages, as well, such as Portuguese.  Students had the opportunity to ask questions and learn about the advantages of mastering another language

 

ASL is unique!

This week, Mrs. Redelings's ASL 3 students focused on grammar and reviewed for their test by playing an exciting game. 

Students also revisited facts concerning American Sign Language, especially the fact that it is not universal language.

Great California Shakeout

World Languages students along with the entire Scripps Ranch High School campus joined the rest of California at 10:18 AM, Thursday morning in an earthquake preparedness drill.  Students went under the desks to "duck and cover" and then evacuated to the football field where heads were counted, roll was taken and every student and staff member was accounted for.  Students and teachers agreed that this was the smoothest year yet with the drill not lasting much more than 25 minutes.

Spanish 5-6 students peer-edit projects

Señor Lawhead's Spanish 5-6 classes are peer-editing each other's descriptive paragraph about another student before submitting it for a grade.  Each member in the peer-editing group takes responsibility for a specific structure (Ser vs. Estar, Verb conjugations, etc.) and circles questionable uses.  On Monday, these paragraphs along with a hand-drawn portrait of the student described will be put together on a sheet of paper and displayed in the classroom. 

"Me gusta..." (I like to...)

Students in Spanish 1-2 with Profe Bañuelos learned how to say what activities they like to do using the first person, second person, and third person. Pictured here is Erica who likes to play soccer (fútbol), and Nick, who likes to play football (fútbol americano). Spanish 3-4 students learned about direct and indirect objects.

L'Automobile Francaise

Madame Leidhoff's students of third year French have read of the early car industry and how Renault, Peugot, Daimler, Citroen played integral role in engineering (all in French). We will be beginning new vocabulary on the car and driving and cultural differences in transportation.

 

Students of first year French are drilling and practicing their ER verbs, creating sentences using visuals, playing verb conjugating games, and TPRS stories.

 

¡Gracias! Merci! Arigato!

Thank-you Weber family for your generous donation of a Staples gift card!  We will put it to good use!  By the way, families, keep those empty ink-jet cartridges (and laser cartridges) coming in!  The Staples recycling program is providing us with a steady stream of gift certificates for office supplies.  Thank-you parents and thank-you Staples!

End of the Grading Period!

It is the end of the first grading period and most classes in the department have finished tests and projects this week.  Grades will be submitted Monday morning and progress reports will be sent home with students later in the week.

Teachers attend Deaf cultural event!

 

Mrs. Redelings and Ms. Gans (former ASL teacher at Scripps Ranch H. S.) attended Carnivale5 and Vaudeville5, a Deaf cultural event for all ages and all people, deaf and hearing alike! The event featured games, circus performers, magicians and comedians, ASL songs, ASL materials, and even personalized t-shirts using ASL! We hope you can join us next year!

French Students Study Impressionism

Madame Leidhoff's students of French 5-6, after a session in the library, have chosen an Impressionist artist who they will present to the class. Students will give a biography of the artist, using forms of the past tense, present and interpret art works they have produced. Further, the student will try to practice or reproduce techniques of the work of the artist.

Students of first year French will present a "T-shirt" that shows representations of themselves, their likes and dislikes and things that they do.

El Aeropuerto - Spanish travel vocabulary

Students in Ms. Ranzolin's 3-4 Spanish class have been learning about vocabulary related to airline travel so they drew and labeled a scene about an airport incorporating their vocabulary, also, they wrote dialogue to go with it about someone going on a trip. Students in Spanish 5-6 class have been learnng new vocabulary that describe people. This week, they worked in partners and wrote essays comparing and contrasting themselves with their partner incorporating their new learning.

Folk Tales and Music

Spanish students in Dr. Jacobson's classes submitted their first essay based on the theme of the qualities of a good friend. After watching the videos of the Columbian folktales El tigre ñato (The pug-nosed tiger) and La mujer pez (The fish woman), students read the scripts and answered questions requiring the analysis of the past vs the imperfect verb forms used in the story. In addition, students practiced auditory skills and grammar knowledge as they wrote about what they understood while watching a video about a girl's memories of summers during her childhood. Students then read their summaries aloud to a partner.

AP students enjoyed listening to a recording of 'El décimo', and participated in comprehension activities with the use of bilingual dictionaries.

Mucho progreso en Español 1-2

In Señora Lemaitre's Spanish 1/2 classes, students have successfully finished up Lección Preliminar and are on their way to Unit 1! So far, they can hold basic conversations to exchange greetings and introductions, share phone numbers, talk about the weather, and respond correctly to classroom instructions. Looking forward to a great week!

Story-telling in Spanish 5-6!

Señor Lawhead's students are preparing for next week's review exam as well as honing their conversational skills using TPR/S methods.  The new exercise for this week was choosing 4-5 random words from our lists and to tell 2-3 quick stories off the top of their heads using each one of the words in any order necessary. 

French students put in beaucoup d'efforts!

Madame Leidhoff's students of first year French did jigsaw reviews of Chapter One to prepare for their first exam.

Students of French 3-4 performed their First Benchmark - interviews on getting to know one another. It was very impressive, completely memorized with excellent verbal cues, intonation and cultural gestes.

Students of Advanced French submitted their final drafts of their essays - nicely polished

City presentations in Japanese. See example!

Mr. Blackwelder's Japanese 3-4 class has just completed city project presentations in which students shared information on a variety of major Japanese cities: from Sapporo in the north to Naha in the south. Information in the presentations included geography, topography, famous sights, festivals, notable cuisine, history, and interesting trivia! Students were also instructed to use as much Japanese as possible during the course of the 2-3 minute presentations.

A number of students in both 1st and 3rd period also used prezi, the free online presentation template. Below is one of the more innovative presentations. Enjoy!

Kyoto a Go Go! on Prezi

"¡Dame otro!" (Give me another!)

Students continued to work through the heat at the beginning of the week with temperatures in classrooms reaching to the 90's and higher.  Here, Jonathan in Señor Lawhead's class gets a bit of relief by taking a spray of water to the face. Several teachers cool off their students by spraying them on request during the afternoon classes.  Thankfully, temperatures appear to be moderating!

"La Amistad" Students write essays on friendship!

Students in Dr. Jacobson's Spanish 5-6 class began a review of grammar, comparing the past, imperfect and present tenses. In addition, students described pictures they brought to class.

After having analyzed the figurative language (e.g. alliteration, metaphor, simile) in the poem 'Amigo mío', students in Spanish 7/8 are writing their first essay, focusing on the theme of friendship. The essay includes a conventional introduction, thesis statement, supportive details as well as evidence of critical analysis and application of the student's thesis to related concepts. As a tool for achieving native like pronunciation, students read aloud their first paragraphs to classmates, using their writing as an avenue through which to demonstrate their speaking skills.

In addition to writing a 5 paragraph essay, AP Spanish students evaluated their personal vocabulary and grammar knowledge through comprehension activities derived from listening and reading selections in commercially produced AP Spanish materials.
 

Spanish con "Accento Cubano"

Students in Spanish 3-4 with Profe Bañuelos viewed a short video conversation in Spanish with him and his Cuban-American friend Elizabeth (pictured) done last month in Miami, Florida. It was to show the differences in Profe's Mexican-American accent and Elizabeth's Cuban accent which isn't heard much here in California as it is in Florida.

Spanish 1-2 students acted out charades to memorize classroom commands.

Ms. Gans now working at La Jolla High School!

Ms. Janelle Gans, former ASL teacher at Scripps Ranch High School is now teaching ASL at La Jolla High School.  World Languages staff and students miss Ms. Gans, but we celebrate her new position and wish her the best!

¡Buenos Días! Students act out introductions.

Students in Ms. LeMaitre's Spanish 1-2 class act out basic greetings and pleasantries in a skit performed in front of class.