Sunbury+MS

media type="vimeo" key="170124404" height="383" width="506" In the fall of 2013, I worked for 6 weeks as a long-term Spanish sub at big Walnut Middle School in Sunbury, Ohio. I started in October after having met briefly with the classroom teacher, who delivered earlier than she had expected. I was fortunate because I was able to pick up her work almost from the beginning of the units I was to teach and also because during the month during the month of October there are many significant cultural celebrations which I love to share with students. First, on October 12th, we celebrate Columbus Day (or in Spanish, //El día de la raza//). This is always a great opportunity to talk about the creation of a new "race", the American race which is celebrated in the Hispanic version of Columbus Day. This has much less to do with the conquering of the Americas initiated by Columbus and more to do with the new identity created by the mixture of European, African and Native cultures. El día de la raza means the Day of the Race. At this time of year, I usually talk about what each culture contributed to creating the new identity and frequently if I am teaching Spanish 1b, it coincides with the chapter on food and I show my video Food's Trip which is about the impact of native American agriculture on Europeans. In this instance I showed the video on Columbus Day in order to talk about native peoples and their contributions. I was working towards the celebration of The Day of the Dead, celebrated at the end of October and the first two days of November. The regular teacher told me I could use the three day week (teacher conferences and training) which coincided with the feast days to learn about this important holiday and have a cultural celebration. =Day of the Dead= This page showcases some of the work the wonderful students at Sunbury MS did during the 6 weeks I was with them. First the Day of the Dead cultural celebration and then two different alternative assessments. I was very fortunate to have the trust and support of the school (which has a great staff and view of education) and was able to implement several projects while teaching the curriculum. The maternity leave coincided with the Latino holiday, The Day of the Dead. It is a syncretic celebration of All Saints Day and Precolumbian celebrations. Spanish teachers love to teach it because it falls at the end of the 1st quarter and almost on Halloween, making it an ideal time to celebrate cultural diversity and teach kids that people in different culture view life and death differently. For many Hispanic peoples, death is simply seen as a part of life or rather, life is a phase through which the soul passes. Americans can easily identify the skull which is used to represent the dead, but this is not a "scary" holiday with all its trickery. it is a celebration of the life of our dead; it is a celebration of life and their lives. From the moment of birth, we are all destined to die...we carry our death with us and so we should not be afraid...especially since on the 3 days of the celebration the souls of the deceased are allowed to come back to visit the living. The figure of the butterfly, often seen in the celebration is a representation of the returning souls (similar to angels). We are like the butterflies, too in a sense, since we are born in one form, the human body, and transformed on our journey. "Like the caterpillar, we long to be free from the form the limits us and soar like butterflies (souls) to a higher realm."
 * BIG WALNUT MIDDLE SCHOOL**
 * El día de los muertos**=



As part of the celebration, we built an //ofrenda//, which is shown here (top right). On the //ofrenda,// family members of the deceased (every on has them) place articles of pictures of their dearly departed, flowers, toys or objects that the deceased family members favored in life. They also cook elaborate meals, feast meals like we do on Thanksgiving or Christmas, including the favorite dishes of the deceased family members and place a plate out for the deceased so they can enjoy their favorite foods, too. it's not unusual to see the deceaseds'' favorite drinks and tobacco, if they smoked. all of these artifacts, help family members celebrate and remember their loved ones. We learned about the celebration and customs over the course of the week and then students we asked to write a 1-1/2 page essay comparing and contrasting Day of the Dead with Halloween. I went over how to write a n essay comparing and contrasting topics (supporting common core goals!!!) and read a few examples. Students were to use the provided vocabulary in Spanish to talk about customs and objects associated with the feast in order to strengthen content of the essay and keep the topic fresh in their memories, but the essay was written in English. The essays were amazing! Students will do a good job when their imaginations are captured... and they were!!!

**"//MI OFRENDA//" PROJECT**
Besides creating the typical "ofrenda" with all of my students (a designated space where family member place pictures of their "dearly departed" along with their favorite goodies and toys) and teaching about the holiday. I had 7th grade students build a little shadow box which they fill with a picture of themselves and pictures of things they liked. This mirrored the cultural concept, but I used it to reinforce the linguistic context of the unit: //Talking about things you like//. After building the boxes following their rubrics, they were to write sentences using "gustar/ fascinar/ interesar" to talk about their likes and tastes. This did take some time, but we drilled the structures in class and worked them quite a lot, so this was considered an alternative assessment and done as part of the final assessment. I liked the fact that the students could relate the cultural concept to themselves (ie, what objects would people use to represent themselves to others) and also the fact that this project allowed them to talk about themselves, their interests and their culture in an authentic way in the target language.







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There were just too many boxes to upload and it really is a pity that it's hard to read their work. But the biggest pity of all is that I didn't think to have them save their essay comparing and contrasting Halloween and the Day of the Dead which showed their understanding of the culture (and was also a great opportunity for them to practice their core content by writing a compare and contrast essay!!!

= = **MI RUTINA DIARIA** The 8th graders were working on a totally different topic: **//"My Daily Routine"//** They were learning about reflexive verbs and daily routines. Once again, we developed vocabulary, and drilled and practice grammar quite a lot before they got to this alternative assessment. They were to create story board following the provided rubric and illustrate or find pictures to describe their daily routines and then write sentences with connecting adverbs of time and frequency to create a story. Once again, this is quite a lot of work for students at this level (perhaps,15-20 sentences). Normally, if I just asked a student to write their routine, I wouldn't get much...but this was a great way to assess their understanding, and get them to produce in the target language !!!