Bienvenido!
¡Hola! Me llamo Gordon. Tengo dieciséis años. Yo vivo en Durango, Colorado con mis padres, mi hermana, y mi perro. Soy alto, moreno, y atlético. Me gusta correr, esquiar, y pasar tiempo con mis amigos.
Poesia de la Comida
For this project, we each chose our own Latin-American country and chose a dish from that country. I chose Venezuelan Arepas, which are small round pieces of bread, almost like cornbread. Venezuelans use Arepas much like we use bread. The second part of the project was to translate our recipe into Spanish and write a short poem that glorified our food. For exhibition, we all made our foods and presented our poems.
To read my poem and recipe, click here.
Project Reflection:
I think that this project was fairly effective for learning Spanish and very effective for bringing a big crowd to exhibition. As far as the Spanish part went, I think that I was able to apply many of the concepts that I have learned in my Ode, but I didn't really learn any new Spanish. However, in my recipe, I had to look up many new vocabulary words. In all, the recipe was probably the hardest part. As for the exhibition, it was fun, but no one really wanted to hear about the Spanish part; They just wanted the food. Even so, I was able to read my ode several times, so I think I still got a fair amount out of the project.
To read my poem and recipe, click here.
Project Reflection:
I think that this project was fairly effective for learning Spanish and very effective for bringing a big crowd to exhibition. As far as the Spanish part went, I think that I was able to apply many of the concepts that I have learned in my Ode, but I didn't really learn any new Spanish. However, in my recipe, I had to look up many new vocabulary words. In all, the recipe was probably the hardest part. As for the exhibition, it was fun, but no one really wanted to hear about the Spanish part; They just wanted the food. Even so, I was able to read my ode several times, so I think I still got a fair amount out of the project.
Arte y Lengua
Project Description/ Descripción del trabajo
This project was our first large, two-part project of the year. In the Arte y Lengua project, we each chose a Spanish or Latin American artist that we liked and studied that artist's history and work. Then, we created our own pieces of art that had at least two connections to the art of the artist that we studied. We also wrote short papers (about 300 words) about our artist, our connections, and our work. I studied a Spanish landscape artist named Carlos de Haes, and my final art piece was a sketch of a canyon. To read my artist statement (Decleración del Artista), click here. |
Reflexion de Trabajo/ Project Reflection
During this project, I learned many things. Mainly, I learned how to use the past tense. For example, I didn’t know that there were two past tenses before this project. In this project, I had to use both past tenses, and applying them to a piece of writing helped me remember what they were and how each tense is used. I also learned a lot about Carlos de Haes, the most famous Spanish landscape painter to date. In addition to learning about Haes himself, I also learned a lot about how landscape painting works. I hadn’t really thought about how professional landscape painters did their work. Now I understand that they make sketches in the field, and then take them back to their studios to paint them. If I was going to do this project again, I would probably choose a different type of art. If I did that, it would be easier to find connections between my art and my artist’s art.
Born Not en the USA / Nacido no en los EEUU
For this project, we wrote children's stories from the perspectives of people like us, but in different cities and countries. Specifically, they are from the perspective of teenagers living in Latin America. The aim of our stories was to convey the culture of another country in a reader-friendly format and practice writing in Spanish. My story is about Jose, a seventeen year-old living living in Santiago, Chile (left). We will present our books to elementary level Spanish speakers on Tuesday, December eleventh at Needham Elementary school.
Mi Cuento Infantil/ My Children's Book: Santiago A Mil
In My story, a boy named Jose, who lives in Santiago, Chile, goes to a festival with his family, hopefully providing some basic idea of what life in Chile might be like. There is a sound recording and video to the right. If it isn't working, just follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrX7NZ_ndQo |
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Project Reflection
This project had many lessons to take away, and two of the most obvious to me are grammar and vocabulary. By writing an entire book, I gained experience not just with learning new words, but also with putting them together to create a final product that was both grammatically correct and had an interesting plot line. I did both of these things to be challenging, but also very beneficial to my Spanish learning process. My Spanish vocabulary certainly expanded quite a bit by writing a book about a place that I didn't know much about. for example, I learned that the word "afueras" means suburbs. This is a term that I might not have learned about without this project. Then, I had to place this word in context in my story, and by doing that, I learned more about grammar as it associates to that specific word.
There were many separate parts of this project that I was pretty proud of, but I think the single thing that I put the most time into was my images, and making sure that they related to my story. While many people chose to use pictures from the internet to illustrate their stories, I decided to illustrate mine completely by hand. This was a lot more work, but I think it paid off in the end. I ended up splitting my 11 typed pages between two pages in my book so that I ended up drawing and coloring a total of 22 pages. There were several times when I considered giving up on the hand-drawn pictures and switching to ones from the internet, but I persevered and ended up with a final product that was aesthetically pleasing and met all of the requirements for the project. In the end, I think that I made the right choice by sticking with drawing all of my pictures because it made my story more unique. While others may have ended up with the same picture from the same website, no-one had the same pictures as I did.
I think that one of the surprisingly challenging things about this project was balanacing time between pictures and content in order to come up with a final product that would be accurate, meet all the standards, and be visually pleasing. We had plenty of class time to work on the writing piece of the project, but when the time for pictures rolled around, I ended up giving myself much more work than I should have by choosing to draw all of my images by hand. As I said above, I didn't regret this choice later, but I still could've balanced my time a little more effectively. There were a few days in class after I had finished my story and was either waiting for feedback or for our books to arrive when I could've started drafting my pictures. Instead, I didn't really do anything. This caused a bit of a time crunch later on in the project.
There were many separate parts of this project that I was pretty proud of, but I think the single thing that I put the most time into was my images, and making sure that they related to my story. While many people chose to use pictures from the internet to illustrate their stories, I decided to illustrate mine completely by hand. This was a lot more work, but I think it paid off in the end. I ended up splitting my 11 typed pages between two pages in my book so that I ended up drawing and coloring a total of 22 pages. There were several times when I considered giving up on the hand-drawn pictures and switching to ones from the internet, but I persevered and ended up with a final product that was aesthetically pleasing and met all of the requirements for the project. In the end, I think that I made the right choice by sticking with drawing all of my pictures because it made my story more unique. While others may have ended up with the same picture from the same website, no-one had the same pictures as I did.
I think that one of the surprisingly challenging things about this project was balanacing time between pictures and content in order to come up with a final product that would be accurate, meet all the standards, and be visually pleasing. We had plenty of class time to work on the writing piece of the project, but when the time for pictures rolled around, I ended up giving myself much more work than I should have by choosing to draw all of my images by hand. As I said above, I didn't regret this choice later, but I still could've balanced my time a little more effectively. There were a few days in class after I had finished my story and was either waiting for feedback or for our books to arrive when I could've started drafting my pictures. Instead, I didn't really do anything. This caused a bit of a time crunch later on in the project.
Exhibition Reflection
Our exhibition for this project was different than most AHS exhibitions. Most of our exhibitions are very formal affairs where we exhibit our projects to our parents, teachers, and really anyone who happens to walk in. For this exhibition, we actually sought out the intended audience of our books: Spanish-speaking kids. My class worked with the Del Alma club at Needham Elementary school. During the exhibition last Tuesday, I read my book to two different kids. As it turned out, neither of them actually spoke Spanish. However, the context of reading our books to kids still had a different effect than most of our exhibitions, even if I did have to explain what each page said in English as well as Spanish.
I didn't think that the exhibition went as well as it could've, mostly because the kids I talked to didn't know Spanish. My story was long enough without having to read each page twice, once in Spanish and again in English, and by the time I finished, the Kids I was talking to had focused in on something other than my book. Plus, seeing as they didn't speak Spanish, they probably found our presentations pretty dull. I think that one thing that could greatly improve the exhibition would be making sure that the Kids that we all talked to actually spoke Spanish. It might also be nice to present to our parents and peers, because I felt that most of the people who saw my book didn't really appreciate how much work went into it, especially the writing part. Even so, I still think that I gained a fair amount from interacting with Kids who aren't my age.
I didn't think that the exhibition went as well as it could've, mostly because the kids I talked to didn't know Spanish. My story was long enough without having to read each page twice, once in Spanish and again in English, and by the time I finished, the Kids I was talking to had focused in on something other than my book. Plus, seeing as they didn't speak Spanish, they probably found our presentations pretty dull. I think that one thing that could greatly improve the exhibition would be making sure that the Kids that we all talked to actually spoke Spanish. It might also be nice to present to our parents and peers, because I felt that most of the people who saw my book didn't really appreciate how much work went into it, especially the writing part. Even so, I still think that I gained a fair amount from interacting with Kids who aren't my age.