Calidoscopio de Mariposas

All 3rd grade students at Grange Hall made a small butterfly and each class made a large Monarch butterfly.  Here are some of our butterflies before being mailed off to Mexico for the winter.  Our symbolic butterflies were mailed off late last week.

Mrs. Marshall's class butterfly:

Ms. Sayegh's class butterfly:

Mrs. McDonald's class butterfly:

Mrs. Hobb's class butterfly:

Mrs. Wilson's class butterfly:

Thank you to Mrs. Palcynski (Mrs. P) for allowing the classes to make the class butterfly in Art class.

In the spring we will receive 5 sets of butterflies much like these from other schools around North America that were cared for in Mexico over the winter.  

For more information about this program please see this website:

Symbolic Migration

Sra. Melara

International Week

Photos from last week's fun activities:

T-shirt day

Some lovely ladies in their sombreros for Sombrero day.

Here at Grange Hall 3rd graders had a history lives exhibit and there were 3 wonderful Cesar Chavez displays.  

Here they are:

I was very impressed with their knowledge about Cesar Chavez.

On-line resource

I just wanted to pass along this great on-line resource for vocabulary pronunciation practice.  Please check this out if you would like to hear and practice saying many of the vocabulary words we learn here in class.

http://www.languageguide.org/spanish-mexico/

Learn another language

Please read this article below, it demonstrates why learning another language is so important for your child's future.  Even if they don't go on to study Spanish, learning a second language now will help them learn the one they want to study later.

Why learning another language is so valuable

The benefits of learning a second language

I've just run across this great article highlighting some of the benefits of learning a second language.  For your reading pleasure.
http://dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39638

Welcome to Grange Hall, 2nd grade style

Second graders have been learning about the School Community so far this year.  They have reviewed the words for the people in school and they have learned the different resource classes in Spanish and all of the rooms in the school in Spanish.  Now they would like to welcome you all to our beautiful little school with a short video introducing you to the school in Spanish.  

I hope it's understandable.  It's hard to get so many children to say the same thing at the same time.  But it was fun touring the school and saying the words in Spanish.  Your children are a joy to work with every day.  Thank you for the opportunity to teach them!

Bienvenidos a Español

Welcome back to Spanish!  I am so happy to begin a new school year.  As usual it has started off so fast that I can barely keep up.  There are many new faces and so many returning students.  I'm so excited every time the students tell me they practice at home or have learned new words.

As we do every year, the kindergarteners come twice a week sharing their resource time with Music.  This helps them immensely with learning the basics so quickly.  They are mastering our basic greetings, the colors and numbers to 5.  They are learning our routine songs quickly and are even saying some of the words of the calendar.

First graders are building on all they learned last year and are adding many new words for the school.  Right now we are talking about school supplies like crayons, pencils, glue, scissors and backpacks.  We will learn the places in school and review the people in school as well.

Second graders are beginning learning about the school and we are learning about how school is in Argentina.  We are also starting a year long chart of the temperatures in Buenos Aires, Argentina and here in Chesterfield County.  It should be interesting once we get into deep winter to see how the weather continues in Argentina.

Third graders are getting used to an entirely different Spanish class as we are now mostly working at the tables.  They have notebooks to keep up with and to keep all of their materials in.  We are doing our butterflies for symbolic migration now and will start with telling time soon.  After that we will learn about the Mayas, Incas and Aztecs.  That is always a fun unit with so many fun things to do in class.

Fourth graders are beginning to learn about the continents and oceans as part of their unit where will will talk about travel, immigration and colonization.  They are also learning how to answer basic questions like:  What is your name? and How old are you?

Fifth graders are learning about Great People.  We will talk about some great Hispanic Americans and they will learn to describe people.  We have started by filling out passports and are moving onto descriptions next.

I hope to be able to update more often this school year.  Please contact me if you have any questions.  michelle_melara@ccpsnet.net

Hasta luego...