Hispanic Heritage Night

For the last month my students have been learning about flamenco. They did an ELA lesson in their classrooms. They did a webquest in Computer Lab. They did a research project and informational poster in Library. And they learned a short flamenco choreography in Music and Spanish. The secret to teaching flamenco and staying in the target language is to get OTHER people to teach the bulk of it for you. I have an amazing team and my students learned a lot about flamenco in English in their classes while we focused on jaleos and direction words for the choreography in my class (keeping to 90% while we were at it!)

We wrapped up the month with a family night on October 16th. Students and their families could watch videos of professional flamenco dancers (I tried to book a live dancer but it didn't work out), try some tapas, make a flamenco fan, buy a book at the book fair, and perform their flamenco dance for their parents. I was a little nervous that no one would show up but two flyers, an email blast, and the promise of food ensured that we had at least 100 people. Scheduling the book fair at the same time also really helped attendance. My instructor from the KY Center Academy this summer even showed up with his wife and played an impromptu cajón and flamenco guitar concert for us! It was a great night but I´m really glad it´s over. ;-)

If you are interested in the ELA units they can be viewed here.
If you are interested in the webquest it can be viewed here.