Spanish

Our fifth grade course, Spanish A, is conducted in Spanish with limited use of English to maximize students’ time in the target language. Students begin the year communicating with high frequency words and phrases while gradually acquiring the skills needed to initiate and maintain simple conversations related to their daily lives; school, family, and recreation. As the year progresses, they begin to sustain discourse in the present tense, and demonstrate increasing spontaneity when responding to direct questions or requests for information. Content and language functions are presented through the reading and discussion of novels, other texts and media suitable for the Novice level.

Our sixth grade course, Spanish B, is conducted primarily in Spanish. Students begin the year communicating about self and family, daily activities, hobbies and personal preferences. As the year progresses, topics expand with a broader focus on community and culture. Students are guided to combine and recombine known and new elements to move beyond sentence-level discourse to lengthier, more connected discourse in both the past and present tense. Increasing spontaneity leads students to be able to initiate, sustain, and bring to a close, conversations on familiar topics as they develop an increasing comfort in asking and answering questions in Spanish. Content and language functions are presented through the reading and discussion of novels, other texts and media. Sixth Grade Spanish is the bridge from the Novice level to Intermediate level.

Our seventh grade course, Spanish C is conducted primarily (90%) in Spanish. At this level, students' creativity in the language increases, as well as their awareness and development of accuracy. Students deepen their verbal and written presentation skills to produce creative pieces, such as comics, videos, and short stories, as well as letters and emails in Spanish, reflecting their greater proficiency and spontaneity with the language, as well as an expanded vocabulary. They develop greater ease with skills to maintain communication, such as paraphrasing, question-asking, and circumlocution.  Students primarily use authentic resources from the Spanish-speaking cultures: newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, poems and songs, interviews, and short videos. As students’ cultural competence increases so does their ability to interpret oral or written texts more accurately. 

Students should not take this level unless they have completed two full years of Spanish study and/or are already able to communicate well beyond the novice level in Spanish.

Our eighth grade course, Spanish D, is conducted 90%+ in Spanish. Students continue to revisit components of previous themes and begin to explore topics that are more global in nature. Interdisciplinary units, centered around art, science, and humanities, increase students’ vocabulary. Latin American and Spanish 20th century history and literature are explored for themes related to food, the environment, and geography, as well as art, social justice and the future. Students discuss events and experiences in various time frames and can handle social interactions in everyday life, including those with an unexpected complication. They read newspaper articles, listen to conversations of native speakers and deduce main topics and tone, write short essays on various themes, participate in debates and practice stating their opinions and predictions for the future.

Students should not take this level unless they have completed three full years of Spanish and have acquired sufficient linguistic abilities to communicate comfortably in different timeframes.