Purpose
Students explore how simple Spanish can share their identities and build connections with classmates, school, and neighborhood. Through a photo-and-sentence gallery walk, short research, and conversations with consenting Spanish-speaking business and community-center partners, they practice reading, writing, and speaking with greetings, identity vocabulary, community words, and present-tense verbs. Students collaboratively create a neighborhood map and illustrated identity cards with Spanish captions, using entry and exit tickets, partner critique, weekly audio reflections, and revision to strengthen clarity and pronunciation. They demonstrate growth by presenting their map and self-profile at a Community Connections Fiesta, where classmates and community partners provide feedback.
Learning goals
Students will use greetings, identity vocabulary, community terms, and present-tense forms of ser, llamarse, tener, gustar, and vivir to read, write, and speak about themselves. Students will research and map Spanish-speaking people and places near the school, using simple questions and captions to explain connections among identity, school, and neighborhood. Students will collaborate with classmates and Spanish-speaking community partners, listen respectfully, rehearse introductions, and revise identity cards and audio recordings using feedback. Students will present a labeled neighborhood map and illustrated self-profile at the Community Connections Fiesta, then reflect weekly in Spanish on a new sentence they can say and a feeling about speaking or listening.
Products
Students create a photo, sketch, or symbol with one Spanish identity sentence, then develop simple interview questions for a Spanish-speaking local business owner or community center staff member. They collaboratively produce a neighborhood map marking Spanish-speaking people and places, with Spanish labels and captions connecting each site to their identities and school lives. Each student drafts, critiques, revises, and presents an identity card featuring a photo or drawing, greetings, and simple present-tense sentences using ser, llamarse, tener, gustar, and vivir. Students also save three weekly audio reflections and curate their maps and identity cards on an exhibition board for the Community Connections Fiesta, where classmates and community partners provide feedback.
Launch
Begin with letting the students know that we'll create a mosaic poetry reading made of short Spanish identity lines such as “Me llamo…,” “Soy…,” “Vivo en…,” and “Me gusta…,” at the end of the trimester read by them.
Exhibition
Host a Community Connections Fiesta in the classroom or library where students display their neighborhood maps and illustrated identity cards on a gallery wall organized by school and neighborhood connections. It is going to be a poetry-reading event. Invite a Spanish-speaking business partner and a community center staff member to visit stations, listen as each student gives a short Spanish introduction, and respond with notes, stickers, or simple written praise on a class exhibition board. Add a live “community map” moment where students point to one place or person on their map and say a few practiced sentences about how that connection relates to who they are. Include a listening station with selected weekly audio reflections so families, classmates, and guests can hear students’ growth in speaking over the four weeks.
