LAUGHTER!!… my favorite assessment tool and a creative force in language acquisition!

Second grade…

How do you know a second grade student understands the target language?  They laugh at the quiz questions!  In class we’ve been experiencing a story together, about Carlos, the capybara and his adventures through the tropical rainforest alongside his friends and enemies.  

Students engage the story, and answer from 25 to 50 or more questions in 10 minutes, then take a quick quiz based on the slides they saw that day. Then the fun begins! They start to laugh as they read the true false statements. “El árbol choca contra el puma. (That’s silly Señora, the tree can’t crash into the puma!” or one of my favorites,  “La mamá de Carlos es un mono.”(“Carlos’ mom is a monkey…LOL!  He’s a capybara not a monkey and so is his mom!)  Children are growing in developing reading skills and reading comprehension.  It is a super fun class.  

They are getting faster and it is giving us time to play Spanish classroom games.  It is also preparing them to read independently.  All students are decoding well and some are reading independently very quickly and with excellent comprehension.  By the end of the term students will have the opportunity to finish reading the chapter book.  Our slideshow is a pre-reading skill building activity and laughter helps us acquire Spanish better!

Third grade…

Third grade students are creating a short accordion book in Spanish class. I worked with each child to develop their story using a simple format. (“ En la ___ hay un ___.”  “In the ___ there is a ___.”)  Students are growing their vocabulary, in order to develop their own story.   They also demonstrated wonderful autonomy and creativity.  One student wrote about a crazy chicken (gallina loca), another about a soccer playing ant (La hormiga futbolista), two others about Michael Jackson, and about baseball, and soccer players. 

A few students finished first and have become the experts to help others complete their according books. The structure of the book uses a zooming in idea beginning with a big idea that you zoom in on and then zoom out.   It’s been a fun activity and they are great books.  We will have them on display in their classrooms soon.  I’m so happy to LAUGH with your child,  CREATE, and make their learning experience FUN!  Thank you!