There are two options for foreign language at Mass Academy: Spanish and French. The language you take depends mostly on what language you took the year prior to coming to Mass Academy, in my case that is Spanish. Spanish at Mass Academy is centered on constant participation and actually speaking in the language on a daily basis. Simultaneously, the class practices new tenses and each student writes down five new unfamiliar words into his or her notebook. As of early January, the class has covered the present, past (preterit), and present perfect verb tenses and has written down an average of over 300 new words in total per student. Occasionally, the class is given a project assignment to complete and present to the class on the due date or the day after. Below are two of these projects in pdf format.

In this assignment, each student was given an artist to research and select three works of art that the artist has made. During presentation day, each student was to describe the details of each of his or her artist’s works: color, objects, what each person wore (if there were any people in a painting), and other artistic details.

During Thanksgiving break, the class was assigned to make a Spanish food and bring to class the Monday everyone came back. I chose to make an appetizer called: “Croquetas de Jamón”, a fried meal made primarily of ham and onions. Each student was also required to make a PowerPoint describing the process of making the meal.