December 4 - 8

SPANISH NOVICE I

We worked on a Mini-Unit on colors, including a reading assessment this week and are now beginning a unit on "Backwards Verbs" (Verbs that use a reverse word order in sentences) such as "Gustar" (To like) and "Interesar" (To be interesting to), along with six other verbs and their object pronouns.  We will be working on a short story about Pedro and what he likes and does not like about school.


SPANISH NOVICE II

We began our new unit called "La universidad" focusing on the phrases, "habla" (he/she talks), "toma" (he/she takes), and "quiere ser" (he/she wants to be) along with the other forms of those verbs.  We worked on sample sentences with these phrases and the class is working on a story about Elle and what colleges she goes to based on the career she is trying to choose.


LATIN

We watched a short video on our first day about the value of Latin for students (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6eYkDhH61Y) and talked about the connections between Latin and English.  We worked on a set of 18 model sentences to learn two basic sentence structures in Latin.  We learned two "Phrases of the Day"; "Carpe Diem" - Sieze the Day (We watched a short clip from Robin Williams' "Dead Poets Society" where he highlights this phrase) and "Cave Canem" Beware of the Dog (Many Ancient Roman homes had this warning at the entry of their houses) Next week we will work on translating a short story about a cook and a dog trying to steal his food and also learn more about typical upper-class homes in Ancient Rome.