Lower School Classroom Chronicle

St. Paul’s fourth graders spent the last few weeks learning about Ecuador and capybaras in preparation for reading El capibara con botas. This is a delightful story about a capybara who was born without the webbed feet necessary to escape from predators in the water. Year after year I have found students enchanted by Carlos, his struggles and his successes and the moments of comedic gold this book contains. The author, Mira Canion, is a leader in the field of writing compelling novice level chapter books for young learners. 

Last Friday I started reading the novel with 4B during Library/Spanish. In this set up half of the students in a class are with me in Spanish and the other half are in the Library with Mx. Borjian, we switch groups after half an hour.  The first group finished reading the Author’s Note and the first chapter before it was time to switch so I asked students to tell me what we learned in the first chapter. You can see the sentences they came up with on the board in this picture. Reading novels and doing comprehension activities about what they’ve read is my favorite way of providing Spanish “input” to students. Its efficacy can be seen in what they are about to “output” immediately after reading.