Spanish 101 12/2/2010

Hi gang. Thursday began in an especially chaotic fashion. Lots of students were asking after their grades, homework assignments, the date of the final exam. I wasn't sure what to tell them. Do we have the final exam date set? I distributed retakes with the explicit instructions that it was a Closed-Book take-home. Only two students submitted the writing assignment I created, so to all instructors, look out for these as they come in and just leave them in the box for me to collect.

I couldn't find the corrected lección 5 exams that Manning and Cline turned in. Are they in the box, or did someone take them home? In any case, I need them because I'm trying to get all of 5 graded for Mara.

The rest of class was vocab intensive. We talked about food vocabulary, discussed different ways to express likes +dislikes, and finally read the dialogue and wrote our own modified skit.

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010

Hi everyone! Today we did some activities with the present progressive to prepare for the exam re-take, and also reviewed difficult consonants like g, q, and j (by request of the students). Then we began Leccion 8 by going over the food vocabulary. We used the menu from the book to act out little restaurant scenes (three tables simultaneously). We did not start any of the new grammar. I let them know that they all need to come to class tomorrow whether they are re-taking the test or not. I took home all of the Leccion 7 quizzes to grade.

11//22/10

Hi All,

We reviewed direct+indirect object pronouns for the first half hour of class. We then covered the hace tiempo que constructions, finishing up the first half of class with some exercises from the book. The second half of class was all preterite, drilling the conjugations. They'll need a lot more work Tuesday if they're going to take the exam on Wednesday.
Kara, I told them you would return the 4-6 exam tomorrow, and many of the guys are asking after workbook exercises also. I also noticed the course evaluations. We should do those soon, no?
I distributed the next writing assignment, which they're to turn into me next Thursday, and I've also given them the chance to correct some of their mistakes from Exam 5 for half credit, so they may turn those in to Tom, if there's class on Friday, or Kara next week.

OK!

November 9, 2010

Today we continued working on Chapter 6. I started by answering some questions, and we ended up talking about the difference between pedir and preguntar, and reviewing "que quiere decir" and "como se dice." We also talked again about tu, usted, and ustedes. We talked about the e~i verbs and did exercise A p. 138 to practice them. We just started working on the pronouns for objects of prepositions, but didn't do any of the exercises.

I have Hector's homework about el mes de julio and all the exams.

SQ SPanish 11/4

Saludos a todos,

And sorry this posting comes a bit late. Yesterday, Thursday, was devoted to reviewing chapter five. Drew and Paul sat at the front of the class; Drew was bright-eyed and bushy, Paul a little less. I reiterated the drop date and Friday's exam, but I assume everyone in the class has made their decisions.

We began class with a "gap-reading exercise;" each student reads one half of a little blurb in Spanish about Madrid and Spanish society, and then in English explains to their partner what there half contains. Next we covered some of the irregular first person sing. verbs and o-ue stem changes. We did a few exercises from the text book, some related activities requiring them to modify third to first person sentences, and finally I set them loose to generate their own sentences that they read in front of the class. A follow-up activity, where they had to formulate questions for each other with the same verbs, sputtered out pretty quickly and it seemed pretty clear that the next thing we need to work on is formulating questions.

After the break we touched on saber/conocer, which they seemed to grasp pretty well. They assured me that they were good on comparatives, so we did a group activity, "abogado del diablo," in which I would provide them with a statement: Barry Bonds es el mejor jugador de béisbol, and they would have to contradict it, propose their own sentence, etc. This didn't work well, and we spent the rest of the class session reviewing the different comparatives, but they still seemed shaky by the end of class. I've already recommended to Tom that he review the different comp. forms in advance of the quiz.

Nick

Updated schedule

Hi guys,

I would definitely recommend reviewing the syllabus with the students and revising as needed. Right now, it looks as if the class is about a week behind schedule, which isn’t all that surprising and fairly typical. So, I think the remaining schedule looks something like this:

Quiz 5: This Friday, Nov 5 (Nick develops)
Test 4-6: Unlikely that you’ll have time to complete Cptr 6 and review 4-5 next week since Thurs is off, so does Mon, Nov 15 seem reasonable? (Kara develops)
Quiz 7: Mon, Nov 22 (Lindsey develops) [no class Thurs and Fri that week]
Quiz 8: Fri, Dec 3 (Mara develops)
Final: Fri, Dec 10 or sooner (Kara takes lead). Actually, I would recommend having it Thurs, Dec 9, just in case. That way, you can still have Thurs to fall back on.

Sorry, I know this message sounds confusing. I was going through the syllabus as I typed. Basically, it is the same syllabus, just a week behind. Can everyone teach an extra week at the end?

How is the new study hall system working?

Finally, I think the students would have time to complete one more short written assignment, maybe due right after Thanksgiving, Nov 29. Nick, it would be great if you could do that.

November 2, 2010

Today we worked on o~ue verbs and did practica A on page 125. We also talked about the irregular yo verbs and did practica A on page 119. We practiced the verb conjugations by writing sentences and sharing them with the class. We also went over saber vs conocer again. I told them that they should prepare for a quiz on Friday, although I have no idea if there will be one . . .