¡Carnaval!

This week the 8th graders read about Carnaval, which is celebrated in many Spanish-speaking countries. The celebration occurs right before the Lenten season, which Spanish-Speaking Catholics celebrate. We read about how different countries have slightly different variations of how they celebrate Carnaval. In the Spanish Canary Islands, many of the colorful costumes have an African influence because the Canary Islands are located off of the coast of Africa. In Barranquilla, Colombia, the celebration is a combination of indigenous, African and European traditions.

Interrogatives

7th Graders: You should be studying your new interrogatives that you learned either with me or with Señora Jones. You need to know the definitions so we can practice using them in questions in class next week. Happy studying!

Language Acquisition

I read an interesting article this week about language acquisition in children. People talk about how learning a language can be challenging, but when we are born, our brains are capable of learning ANY language. We lose that capability as we get older. I'm obviously interested in language acquisition because I watch my students work on their acquisition of Spanish every day. The other reason I'm interested is because I want Baby Bergmann to start learning both English and Spanish from a young age. I know that the younger he is when we start teaching him both languages, the easier it will be for him to acquire fluency in both of these languages. I know not everybody finds this interesting, but I'm amazed at what our brains are capable of! Read the article here to learn more about how our brains acquire language.

7th Grade U2E2 vocab

You can practice for the vocab quiz here to quiz yourself on the words. Don't forget to use definite articles with the nouns!