Pages

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Celebrating Mexican Culture!





Recently Mrs. Yollis' class read "Pepita Talks Twice!"

Pepita, who can speak both English and Spanish, decides that she doesn't want to "speak twice" anymore. When her decision creates problems she hadn't thought of, Pepita realizes that sometimes it can be a good thing to understand two languages.





The story was even written in both English and Spanish,






so we began learning some Spanish words ourselves.




*       *      *       *       *






The video below, made by students in both Mrs. Ranney's and Mrs. Yollis' class, demonstrates many Spanish words we learned!


Just in case YouTube is blocked, here is a Vimeo version!

Let's Learn Spanish! from mrsyollis on Vimeo.


Translations:


¡Bueños días! Good day!


¡Bueñas tardes! Good afternoon!


¡Bueñas noches! Good night!


¿Cómo estas? How are you?


¡Muy bien! Very well!


¡No muy bien! Not very well!


¡Que lástima! What a pity!


¡Gracias! Thank you!


De nada. You're welcome.


¡Hasta mañana! See you tomorrow!


¡Hasta luego! See you later!



Los Días de la Semana The Days of the Week


lunes Monday


martes Tuesday


miércoles Wednesday


jueves Thursday


viernes Friday


sábado Saturday


domingo Sunday



Me gusta...I like...


el pan bread


los tacos tacos


escuela school


matemáticas math



¡Que divertido! What fun!


¡Que buena idea! What a great idea!


¿Vamos a aprender Español? We're going to learn Spanish?



*       *      *       *       *


Later in the week, with our friends in Mrs. Ranney's class, we celebrated with the Mexican Hat Dance...








and by having Jollene's mother bring homemade enchiladas and share some information about Mexican culture!



























What did you enjoy most about our celebration of Mexican culture?

What other Spanish words or phrases have you learned?

36 comments:

  1. Dear Mrs. Yollis and students,
    I enjoyed listening to the Spanish conversations, the Mexican Hat Dance that was performed, and the pictures of the yummy food. I'm sure you all loved it. How wonderful to learn about a culture like this.

    Ratings: ★★★★★

    Sincerely,
    Soosan(Ava's mom)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Mrs.Yollis,
    I really thought doing the Mexican Hat dance was very thoughtful because we got to practice and then do the real performance. I loved that great plan.

    Sincerely,
    Aalisha(from Mrs.Ranney's class)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Mrs Yollis,
    I really enjoyed doing the Mexican Hat Dance and the Spanish video. We had a taco party in our class.
    Sincerely,
    Roxana (Mrs. Ranney student)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    We just watched the videos of the mexican culture. It was fun to watch and learn. Will we learn french next?


    Sincerely,
    Barbara and Jaxon

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Mrs Yollis and Mrs Ranney and all your wonderful students,
    well I must say I really enjoyed this post. I am so very impressed with the way you all spoke in spanish.However I really did enjoyed watching you all dance to the Mexican Hat Dance as I used to dance to the Mexican Hat Dance too when I was at school.
    Jollene`s mum must have made the best enchiladas as they looked so GOOD.
    How lucky you all are to be able to learn about another culture. Thankyou for another adventure into another wonderful culture from your friend down under AA.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mrs Yollis! What a wonderful series of videos, I loved the language lesson ones, and I will definatly play those to my students on Monday. I really liked the fact that you role modelled first to your students! It was great, it really made me smile, and I am sure that the students would have enjoyed the learning experience! I also love getting an education myself as a teacher, I have to say that I don't know very much about Mexican culture and that I have never heard of a Hat Dance but I also loved the video! Wonderful work!
    Mr Webb, Room 8, Melville Intermediate, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand.
    PS- I think that we might create our our Mexican video using your video as a model if that's alright!

    ReplyDelete
  7. @ Soosan, (Ava's mother)

    Thank you for your FIVE star rating! You know how to do all these cool icons! How did you make the stars? I remember you did a heart once too!

    We had a great time with the story!

    @ Aalisha, (from Mrs. Ranney's class)

    I loved doing the Mexican Hat Dance too. When I danced with Mrs. Ranney, I nearly lost my breath! :-) Now you can do the dance at home with your sister, Aaliyah!

    @ Roxana,

    ¡Muy bien, Roxana! ¡Usted es un buena estudiante español! Great acting as well!

    @ Ms. Palmer and Jaxon,

    We have had a manifold of cultural experiences on our blog. So far, no French. Consider yourself invited to our class! :-)

    @ AA,

    Thank you so much for your kind words! We had a very fun week learning about Mexican culture. Yes, the enchiladas that Jollene's mother made were muy bien!

    @ Mr. Webb, (from New Zealand)

    I am glad you enjoyed our video series. (Are you able to view YouTube in New Zealand?)

    Mrs. Ranney and I had a fun time filming our segment, and I agree with you that it is good modeling for the children. :-)

    Feel free to use our video as a model. We all learn from one another!

    Sincerely,
    Mrs. Yollis

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dear Mrs.Yollis,
    I loved how you helped the kids learn spanish. That was very helpful for the kids. You should teach them another tradition.


    Sincerely,
    Denise (Jollene's cousin)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    Thank you for having me in your class. It was a great expericence sharing about the Mexican culture with the students. I loved watching the students dancing the Mexican Hat dance.

    Sincerely,
    Senorina (Jollene's mom)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Mrs Yollis and Class. We watched this video about 25 times this morning (yes, really) and then again this afternoon and during this afternoon's lesson we had to say the days of the week in Spanish (which I'd like you to judge if you wouldn't mind, that is your classroom) and also we got the students to say one Spanish word or phrase that they had learnt from listening. The video of this will be available tomorrow!
    We will send it with a link for you to post online!
    Mr Webb and Room 8, Melville Intermediate School, Hamilton, Waikato - New Zealand!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I really enjoyed watching the Mexican Hat Dance video. I wish I would have been there learning the Mexican Hat Dance. It seems alot of fun.

    Sincerely,
    Janine (Jollene's sister)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I thought that the enchiladas were delicious! I liked the enchiladas because it had my favorite in it, cheese! Do like enchiladas?


    Sincerely,
    Aaliyah :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Dear Mom,

    Your enchiladas were super good! We should start having conversations in Spanish at home. Did you see the Mexican Hat dance at the house?

    Love,
    Jojo

    ReplyDelete
  14. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I had a lot of fun dancing the Mexican Hat Dance.

    I'm learning to play the song on the piano. It's tricky, but I'm getting there.

    Jollene, thank you for the enchiladas! They were mouthwatering.

    Sincerley,
    Senor Ben

    ReplyDelete
  15. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    Thank you for commenting back. I enjoyed saying señorita to Kayla. Also, I think that learning a new language is very fun.

    Sincerely,
    Señorita Jaxon

    ReplyDelete
  16. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I loved the enchiladas so much! I liked how there was cheese in the inside. It looked like pizza, but it was so much better. It was my favorite food in the world!

    The Mexican Hat dance was so fun, also.

    It was a fun Mexican day.

    Did you like that day?



    From,
    Sydney

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I love the idea of doing the Mexican Hat dance with Mrs. Ranney's class. When we were doing it I got a little confused which place to switch my feet. One of my favorite parts is doing it with Mrs. Ranney's class because I got to do it with one of my friends. What was your favorite part?

    Sincerely,

    Ava

    ReplyDelete
  18. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I liked doing The Mexican Hat Dance! It was fun skipping around the imaginary hat. Jollene's enchiladas were good too.

    Your student,
    Trent

    ReplyDelete
  19. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    It was really fun learning about Spanish!

    Another fun thing was learning about the Spanish letter keystrokes.

    Here is are two. This is the n: ñ. Here is an a with the accent: á.

    When I was trying to do the a with the accent, it didn't work because I did option a. I was suppose to do option, e, release the option key, and then press a.

    Sincerely,
    Kayla

    P.S. It's really fun doing the keystrokes that I can't stop!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I like how we did the Mexican Hat Dance. It was a fun experience to observe and learn the Mexican Hat Dance. Too bad we didn't have any hats (sombreros). :-(

    It was hard for me to circle around at the right time. I like to do the Mexican Hat Dance, do you? Have a ¡Muy bien! day!

    From,
    Richie

    ReplyDelete
  21. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    That was a great post! One of the reasons I loved the post is because, there was not just one video there were two in one post. My favorite video would be Lets Learn Spanish. Of course the Mexican Hat Dance was really fun to do.

    Your student,
    Gal

    ReplyDelete
  22. Dear Mrs. Morales and Mrs. Yollis,

    I thought the homemade enchiladas were delicious!

    When we did the Mexican Hat Dance you can see in the video that my partner and I messed up sometimes!

    Mrs. Yollis, when I was doing the dance I learned that you have to switch feet during it because when I was doing it, I only did my right foot.

    Sincerely,
    Nick

    ReplyDelete
  23. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    Learning Spanish was a pleasure!

    I learned words like: lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado. domingo. Those are the days of the week in Spanish.

    Conversations you can have in Spanish is easy, I will show you.

    ¡Bueñas tardes! ¡Muy bien!. I just said, "Good afterneen!" and the other person said, "Very well!" I have learned plenty more from you.

    Thank you for teaching me Spanish!

    From,
    Scarlet

    ReplyDelete
  24. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I really liked how we did the Mexican Hat Dance with Mrs. Ranney's class. The enchiladas were amazing!

    My favorite part about Mexican culture was when we ate the enchiladas.


    Your friend,
    Jared

    ReplyDelete
  25. @Cousin Denise,

    Thank you for commenting to our blog. Have you tried my mom's enchiladas?

    @ Mom,

    Great comment, Mom! I wish you where there, but you have to work:(.

    @ Janine,

    You would have liked dancing, if you were there. What do you think of mom's enchiladas?

    Love,
    Jojo :)

    ReplyDelete
  26. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I loved the Mexican hat dance. When I first was going to try it seemed hard, but when I tried it was easy.

    From,
    Moraiya

    ReplyDelete
  27. Dear Mrs. Yollis & Mrs. Ranney,
    The Mexican Culture posts were very interesting. You and your students did a great job speaking Spanish! I especially enjoyed the Mexican Hat Dance. I can relate to Pepita in Pepita Talks Twice because when I was growing up I always translated for my grandmother.

    Muchas gracias por todo lo que hasen para educar a nuestros hijos.

    Sincerely,
    Dora (Jared's mom)

    ReplyDelete
  28. Dear Mrs.Yollis,

    I love enchiladas they are so good and so cheesy. The Mexican hat dance was so fun but tiring. I really enjoyed learning about the Mexican culture. Every week at our house we have "Taco Tuesday".
    That is my new,favorite meal of the week!


    Love,
    Anais

    ReplyDelete
  29. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    The Mexican Hat dance was really fun but hard for people to do Mexican style. Did you like the homemade enchiladas? I liked when we did Lets Learn Spanish. My favorite word was domingo and martes and all the others that Scarlet and I learned.

    Best,
    Jollene and her Dad :>

    ReplyDelete
  30. Dear Mrs. Morales,

    I really enjoyed your coming to our class and sharing your Mexian culture with us. I learned that bull fighting started in Mexico from you. I loved your home-made enchiladas. How did you make them so tasty? I wish I could have them
    more offen.

    Thanks,
    Paul

    ReplyDelete
  31. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I really enjoyed doing the Mexican Hat Dance! I thought it was really fun as well. My partner was Natalie, and I think that she is a great partner to be with because she knows all of the steps and she did them perfectly!

    Sincerely,
    Kayla ;)

    P.S. Jaxon was also a great partner for the Spanish too because she was focused on the subject. She stayed on the topic of learning Spanish.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Dear Mrs. Morales & Mrs. Yollis

    Paul told us the other day how much he enjoyed your presentation of Mexican culture and home-made enchiladas. We don't eat much Mexican food. But once in a while we go to Mexican restaurants to eat burritos and enchiladas. Paul said that the enchiladas you made was very good.

    I have to comment on the story of Pepita. I happened to read it myself as well. It was well written and very educational. This can be a good reflection of children of the second or third generations of other nations. As the world is becoming smaller and smaller, it is so important and useful to learn and have a good command of the second foreign language. By the end of the story, Pepita realized that her Spanish was so vital and it saved her pet.

    Sincerely,
    Matthew (Paul's dad)

    ReplyDelete
  33. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I had a lot of fun that day. Jollene, I loved your enchiladas, they were really delicious!

    Thanks,
    Corey

    ReplyDelete
  34. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I enjoyed watching the Mexican Hat dance. But, I was wondering,why it's called Hat dance. Is there any hat involved during the dance?

    The conversation was awesome. It is a wise idea to encourage students to know about other cultures and languages.

    Sincerely,
    Elham
    ~Kayla's mom~

    ReplyDelete
  35. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I enjoyed watching the kids speak in such a cute Spanish accent. Also, the Mexican hat dance was so much fun to see. I believe they had a lot of fun dancing to the music.

    Michael (Kayla's dad )

    ReplyDelete
  36. Mrs Yollis & students.
    What a fantastic Mexician Hat Dance.We are looking different countries, including our own "New Zealand"

    Your blog has provided us different ideas how we can celebrate other cultures.

    Could you ask your students-" what things are important in their culture"

    We would love to know ?

    Kind Regards

    Students & Mr Thurlow

    Room 2
    Burnham school
    New Zealand

    ReplyDelete

* * *
Getting feedback is important to our writers. Let us know what you liked or what you learned.

Steps to Comment:

1. Write your comment in the box below. Be sure that you have proofread it for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. Students should have a parent check it!

2. Choose an identity. (If you have a gmail account, use it. If not, choose name/url. You can leave the url blank if you do not have a blog.)

3. Click "Publish your Comment". You may preview your comment before publishing if you'd like.


Important: All comments MUST be approved by me.
:-) Mrs. Yollis