Grade 8 Spanish: dancing and shopping with Rosalba!

Thanks to a grant from the PTO, eighth grade Spanish students enjoyed a visit from Rosalba Solís right before Thanksgiving.  She talked about Latin American indigenous cultures, led interactive games and taught salsa steps to everyone!  Finally, kids practiced interacting with a vendor in the pop-up mercado that Rosalba and her sister set up outside the cafeteria.

Being able to interact with native Spanish speakers was a great opportunity for our students, and the cultural benefits were packed into each of the six classes.¡Muchas gracias a Rosalba y el PTO!

8th Grade Spanish students spent time this week studying the symbolism and significance of  El Día de los Muertos. Classes met in the Makerspace to create calaveras y cempasúchiles (skulls and marigolds) and learned of their importance on the ofrendas that families construct in their homes this time of year. Students are ending the week with a viewing of the movie Coco and a deeper understanding of why this is such a special time of year in México. 

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Our Felt Calaveras

Making our light up marigolds!

Our Community Ofrenda

Visitors from Bengbu China!

We had visitors from Bengbu China stay with us from September 25th to October 5th. What a great experience for both visitors and our students in Medfield. It truly opened another world to us. During the stay, visitors did cultural presentations and music shows to Medfield students and families. We truly learned a lot from them. Below are the short stories from our four host students and link for pictures.

When I hosted Diana, I thought it would just be 10 days of just bringing someone from China around my life. But it was so much more. It became a real friendship. When I picked her up from the high school, I was so excited. And when we dropped her off, I was so sad. I never thought you could become this close with someone in 10 days. Even though we are across the world, we can still keep in touch. Even though we miss them, we can still talk to them with WeChat. I loved going on the duck tour, and going to the beach in Newport. I have unforgettable memories from this trip. It was amazing. This was a great experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.--Kathryn

 

When I picked up Rosa from the high school, I really didn’t want to host anyone because I’m not used to sharing my family to other people. But the experiences I had with Rosa are unforgettable. I also got closer to other families in Medfield especially Kathryn’s family, the Buckley’s. Over the weekend when the students were here, all of us went to do stuff together. Diana and Rosa are friends so it was perfect. I learned so much about Chinese culture and Rosa learned more about Boston and Medfield. My favorite moments were going on the Duck Tour, and going to Newport and to the beach. I will never forget this amazing experience.--MiaTina was an amazing guest and she loves America. Not only did she grab my dog after he ran away and saved him from possibly being eaten by a squirrel, she was curious about many things. Her two favorite meals were scrambled eggs topped with strawberry jam and spaghetti. We soon became used to a new person in our house and came to think of her as a sister. I was sad to see her go and I hope I see her again. –Alex

Candy was an amazing guest and she was so much fun to hang out with. At first I was a little nervous to host because I didn’t know if I would be ready to.  But the experiences that I had with candy were unforgettable.  I got to know a lot about people and even what they ate.  On the last day I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see her leave but she came running up to me and said goodbye. Now that I think about it that was one of the most fun couple weeks of my life!-Ava

Link for videos and pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-vjfJ4vcSd3M2RXNkJDcnd2aVk?usp=sharing

Pen-Pal Exchange

French 2 students are actively participating in an exchange of letters with pen-pals in France.  Students at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Lyon are writing to MHS students in English, and in turn our students write to them in French.  It has been rewarding for them to realize that it's ok if the grammar isn't perfect and they are all learning a language.  Can your correspondent understand you?  That is the main goal.

So far this year, the students have already exchanged letters twice, and of course have connected on Instagram and Snapchat!  Through this authentic exchange (via regular mail), they will write about themselves, their families, sports, music and movies, as well as their travels.  Receiving actual letters on French paper and seeing how differently the handwriting is - that alone is very interesting.  Later in the year, there will also be an exchange of quick videos, which are a lot of fun to watch.

We are very lucky to have this opportunity, and I'm sure it will be a very rewarding exchange all year!

Medfield World Language Department hosts WLClassroom/Joshua Cabral for an ACTFL CORE practices workshop

Yesterday afternoon, February 2, during our professional development time, the World Language department had the pleasure (and the luxury) of meeting together as a full department grades 2-12. We welcomed Joshua Cabral aka WLClassroom to our district; he provided us with a full afternoon of philosophy, pedagogy, and examples for our classrooms.  Through previous communication via phone calls, e-mails, tweets, and Facebook, we determined that Mr. Cabral would present the ACTFL proficiency levels and then focus on target language use/comprehensible input and feedback from the six ACTFL CORE  practices. Mr. Cabral was favorably impressed with the work that our department is already doing (check out the image of his tweet and also on our twitter feed on the right of this page):

We learned a great deal from working with him throughout the afternoon.  It was a great way to spend our professional development time.  We had the rare chance to gather all the teachers from all four buildings in town and hear the same up to date professional practice tenets that guide our everyday passions: teaching our Medfield students to communicate in another language. He underscored the importance of speaking the target language during class and we dove into different types of feedback that did not necessarily include a grade. Coaching was the word of the afternoon as we learned different ways to coach our students to level up their proficiency levels in the languages that they study. The experience was energizing and professional.  Many of us left with a renewed sense of purpose as we head into the second half of the academic year.   As I mentioned, WLClassroom was also favorably impressed with some of what we already do in Medfield. Srta. Seri's model grammar/ target/word/ walls were a great hit!

WLClassroom helped to affirm our proficiency practices and encourage us to continue to work toward proficiency for all of our Medfield students.

World Languages Celebrate Their Students at MHS

 We have begun the year in fine form throughout the district in all of our world language classes. Recently I read a post (by George Couros) about ten ways to create amazing classroom culture. I re-tweeted the post and pointed out that our World Languages and Cultures teachers do some of these every day (Greet kids at the door, play music, make our first interactions positive, and have them ask questions everyday). There are others and we do all of these from time to time, but these four are stand outs for our department. I guess this is no surprise as we have the word "Cultures" in our title.

Latin students at Induction Cermonies

Not long ago, in October,  the high school celebrated their students with a formal ceremony -or four ceremonies to be more exact,  to celebrate our students in all four languages. We organized and evening with four inductions ceremonies for French, Latin, Chinese, and Spanish for honor our most passionate and highest achieving students. In total, we welcomed approximately 70 new students to our societies.  It was a great evening as we came together to celebrate the many talents of the various students in our World Languages and Cultures Department at MHS. We divided the ceremony into two parts. The French National Honor Society and the Latin National Honor Society presented their certificates and conducted their ceremonies.

student jazz musicians at honor night

We then had a 20 minutes intermission with refreshments  and live entertainment by a group of students musician who volunteered to play for our occasion. We were thrilled that they came and performed. They added a measure of elegance and true international flavor, as they serenaded the parents and students with jazz compositions from a variety of world music.  After our intermission, the Chinese and Spanish National Honor Societies  held their ceremonies. The similarities between the honor groups is striking. They all talked about making connections through the study of the languages and cultures. Both students and teachers spoke about carrying forth their passions for learning about and understanding cultures that our different and unique, yet connecting with others. Our goal is always to help encourage students to continue their studies and pursue their curiosities in order to promote their own learning.
Under the leadership of Ms. Goodrow-Trach, the students collaborated to create a video that represented this idea as the formal "entertainment" for the evening. We are proud of Madame's (merci @curlyfrenchgirl production) editing skills and the creative ideas that she brought to the table. The students were all offered an opportunity to participate in the video and we showed this music video during each section of the evening (with original credit to We are the World USA/ Africa and all the original, amazing musicians from the 80's). Please enjoy the video below. We Are the World!

Dale Street Mystery Skype Call

Last week one of Señora DellaMonica's fifth grade classes and one of Señora LeVangie's fifth grade classes participated together in a mystery Skype call with the help of Technology Integration Specialist Debby Fromen.  Our students had no idea which Spanish speaking country the other class was in and the other class did not know which state we were in.  Both classes had to solve the mystery in ten yes or no questions or less!  Prior to the call students were assigned to various jobs such mappers, questioners, speakers, recorders, photographers, etc.  The students were so excited to connect with this mystery class.  The call began with our students asking in Spanish if the other class was located in South America.  When the answer was no, they tried Mexico, then Europe, and then Spain.  Finally they asked if the other class was in Madrid and the answer was a resounding "SÍ"!  Working together, our class had solved the mystery in only five questions.  Everyone cheered loudly.  The Spanish class asked their questions in English and figured out we were in Massachusetts shortly after we discovered they were in Madrid.  Because the students were so successful we had time to ask some questions in Spanish to discover more about a Spanish student's daily life.  We wished the call were longer because there was such enthusiasm about asking the questions.  Our students were surprised to hear that the Spanish students attend school from 9-5 with a break in the middle of the day for lunch and play.  They were thrilled to learn that they currently share the same favorite song, "Despacito" by Justin Bieber.  They also noted differences in time and temperature.  It was a blazing 97 degrees in Madrid that day!  The students talked about favorite sports and sports teams and also noted the other class was in uniform.  It was such a thrilling and worthwhile experience for our students to connect with native speakers.  The overwhelming feedback was to do it again next year!