Center for Creative Learning
Sandy Chavira
Ms. Sandy has years of experience teaching Spanish and providing individual tutoring. In 2020 she decided to also offer classes online and since then she has taught almost 500 learners either individually or in a small group format. She has taught classes through a number of organizations and her learners have ranged from 6 to 18 years old. She believes that one of the most rewarding aspects of being an educator is seeing the exact moment when a learner “clicks” with a new concept.
Ms. Sandy is a native Spanish speaker and completed course work in media and communications in her country of origin. There, she was the youngest member of a literary workshop under award winning authors and was a college intern at El Siglo, the largest newspaper in her city. She is familiar with differences in language usage in various Spanish-speaking countries. She models pronunciation with a neutral Spanish accent and can also honor the diversity of accents from various countries. Her philosophy is that learning should be joyful and fun. She likes to use games, hands on projects, and movement to help engage her learners.
On a personal note, Ms. Sandy has always homeschooled her son who is starting 8th grade and a learner at Huck. Ms. Sandy is now in the middle of learning her third language, so she experiences first hand the challenges that her learners might be experiencing and is able to teach more effectively with that in mind.
Spanish 1
Ages: 9-12
This is an introductory Spanish class from Ms. Sandy’s Learning With Joy series, which has become a learners’ favorite in other platforms. This class will focus mainly on conversational Spanish. There will be writing and reading exercises to present a balanced approach, but the majority of the time will be used on improving listening comprehension skills and speaking.
Each week the learners will be introduced to new phrases and high frequency words. These are the types of phrases and words that are more commonly used in everyday conversations. The new words and phrases will be arranged by category, with a new unit each week. We will also practice concepts learned in previous weeks, so they won’t be forgotten. The structure of the class lends itself to engage the interest of learners whether they have zero prior exposure, have had one semester of Spanish, or have had some exposure and are familiar with a couple of topics in Spanish.
Each class will include an introduction, verification of understanding, opportunity for practice, and a hands-on activity or a game to help us review what was learned during class. Some of the interactive activities will include: paired up ask and answer, wheel of fortune, guided drawing and coloring (instructions given in Spanish), and many more games.
The class will include the use of the Comprehensible Input technique as well as Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Story Telling.
We will enrich our language acquisition by learning some of the major landmarks and points of interest in various Spanish speaking countries. We will also talk about fun cultural highlights of several countries.
This class will incorporate moment of functional movement. This is designed to keep the learners actively interested, provide a break, and an opportunity to exercise their listening skills as they are prompted to dance, jump, turn, with instructions given in Spanish.
The main differentiating element between the two classes is the type of activities and the complexity of the phrases taught, based on age group. For both groups, learners should be able to read full sentences comfortably and write at least one full sentence independently in their native language
Contact
Ms. Sandy