Spanish Booklet Covers
Brief Description: Students
who have Spanish lessons once a week throughout the school year develop
booklets about the life of a Spanish family. They use the computer to create
covers for the booklets, and then they present their work by reading and
showing the contents to other classes and to their parents.
Grade Level & Subject:
Grades 3-7, Spanish (or could be any other language taught to younger students)
Materials & Equipment:
Computers, paint program and program such as ClarisWorks, printer
Procedures:
The students learn Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation
throughout the school year. It is presented by means of a Spanish booklet
that we have studied and illustrated page by page. The booklet tells of
a day in the life of the Martinez family-David, Ana, and their parents.
They live in México but are from the United States and speak both
English and Spanish. It is morning and Mrs. Martinez urges her children
to hurry and get up as it is late. The family greets one another and gets
their clothing organized to begin their day. They gather in "la cocina",
the kitchen, to eat and the choices for breakfast are discussed before
they depart for school and work.
Using this story idea, the students learn "every
day" vocabulary including clothing, breakfast foods, greetings and
much more. To cover their booklets, the students went to the computer lab
and by using ClarisWorks and Kid Pix , they created some very elaborate
and exciting Spanish cover pages.
They put together their booklets and presented their stories
in Spanish to other classes, faculty and administration on the final day
of class.
Student instructions for Computer Lab Work:
- Open up ClarisWorks Drawing document.
- Click on the "A" tool in the toolbar and draw
a box on the page to type in.
- Type the title of your book.
- Click on the arrow tool, then on your title (4 black
dots should appear at the corners of your title box).
- Go to "Format" menu and choose Font, Style,
Color, and Alignment (Center) for your title.
- Save document to Documents folder as "Spanish Cover.your
name".
- Quit ClarisWorks.
- Open up Kid Pix and draw a picture or use the stamps
for your cover page. You can change the stamps to "Hodgepodge"
and you will find a couple of Spanish items like a sombrero.
- Save the picture to the Kid Pix - KPS Creations folder
as "Spanish pic.your name".
- Quit Kid Pix.
- Open up "Spanish Cover.your name" from the
Documents folder.
- Go to "File" menu and choose "Insert".
- Go to Kid Pix - KPS Creations folder and click twice
on your "Spanish pic.your name".
- If necessary, resize your picture by going to "Arrange"
menu. Choose "Transform" then "Scale by percent..."
and type in the appropriate percent.
- While on the arrow tool, you can move your picture around
and center it on the page.
- Go to "File" menu and "Save".
- Print Cover!
Extensions: Because of the
short time I spend with the class each week, I only had time to fit the
book cover into our schedule. However, students would thoroughly enjoy
creating their entire story booklet using computer technology. With additional
time in the computer lab, we could also add words on the computer and sound
them in Spanish. There are so many possibilities for use with all my young
students. They love their Spanish lessons and they love computers. It would
be so much fun to combine these for greater learning and exciting learning
activities.
Suggestions for Parents: Parents
who are interested in having their children learn foreign languages at
a young age, might purchase one of the nice programs available to teach
foreign languages such as the Broderbund series. Although these are targeted
to older students and adults, it would be fun for families to do these
programs together.
Parents might also teach their children the basics of
a language through use of a story booklet about a family such as the one
mentioned above. If they wish, they might create their own language booklets
on the computer, in addition to the booklet cover.
Most important, parents should have the children practice
using the language with them. In the lesson above, one of the favorite
parts is presenting what they've learned to other classes. They are so
proud of their language skills.
Submitted by:
Lisa Cook
Berlin, MD
