Wednesday, March 10

Hi everyone,

I taught solo today because Krista had an unforeseen scheduling conflict. We began with a simple review of just one part of ser y estar, which I distinguished through the questions: "¿Cómo está?" and "¿Cómo es?" They seemed to catch on pretty quickly that the difference between the verbs isn't merely permanent vs impermanent, but rather, in this case, the attributes of a person (ser) versus one's sentiments (estar).

We reviewed "ie" stem changing verbs, and they seemed very on top of the work. Then I had them read the short text on page 104, and answer the questions on page 105 in order to practice conversation in groups of two.

As they worked together I assigned each student a name, and after the break they came back in to find two family trees on the board. With their new names in tow, I sent them around the classroom to find their herman@s, abuel@s, padres, sobrin@s, tí@s, etc. This was a wonderful assignment, and the guards had to come by and ask to keep the volume down because students were so happy to find their "long lost" brother, sister, and so on.

We ended with a short review of saber and conocer. A few students handed in straggling Lesson 4 assignments.

Tom