Mi carpeta digital de español/ My Spanish Digital Portfolio
Hola, me llamo Emily Wieser. Yo vivo en Durango, Colorado y yo soy quince años. Está mi segundo años a la escuela de Animas High. Me gusto leer libros de ficcioin y dibujo. Yo tengo uno hermano, dos primas, y dos tías que son muy importante a mi.
(Hi, my name is Emily Wieser. I live in Durango, Colorado and I'm fifteen years old. This is my second year at Animas High School. I like reading fictional books and drawing. I have one brother, two cousins, and two aunts who are very important to me.)
(Hi, my name is Emily Wieser. I live in Durango, Colorado and I'm fifteen years old. This is my second year at Animas High School. I like reading fictional books and drawing. I have one brother, two cousins, and two aunts who are very important to me.)
Arte y Lengua
This project consisted of choosing a spanish artist as a mentor, studying their works, and then creating your own piece based off the techniques used in the original work. I chose Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, an impressionistic painter from Valencia, Spain. The art piece I chose was called the "Valencian Fishergirl." While creating your art piece, each student was required to write three paragraphs on the artist and the connections between the students artwork and the mentors. We also had to learn vocabulary words related to art, colors, and prepositions.
Project Reflection
Doing projects within this class is really enjoyable because it always enables me to become more engaged and involved in my work and practicing my spanish. What I've discovered when studying the various spanish artists from different countries is how art is truly universal. You can be from any type of culture, and look at a piece of art and immediately connect with it in some personal way. So really, art has no social or cultural boundaries, in my personal opinion.
Since we are deep into the school year, the grammar is becoming more advanced and difficult to understand. It's really a wakeup call to how demanding and persistent you have to be when it comes to learning a new language. The little things that you learn in the beginning of the first semester add up to grammar like "GO" verbs. Vocabulary is always a fun thing to learn when you are incorporating words into what you want to express. There is a certain pride in knowing a word that you can use clearly and diversely in a sentence.
Learning about my mentor was interesting. I like to consider myself fairly good at art, and seeing the social and cultural differences, and how Sorolla advanced in the art world in the past, is really interesting. He became an orphan at a young age, and signed himself up for art classes. To see the resources I have now that could help me advance in the art world, and comparing that to what Sorolla had and what he ultimately accomplished, is also interesting.
I am the most proud of my painting. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Paint is a really hard medium to use in art, because of the various techniques and strategies it requires you to know if you want your piece to turn out good. Initially, there was definitely some trepidation, but painting is very soothing, (even if your not amazing at it), and almost therapeutic. So not only did my painting turn out good, but a certain level of stress was removed when I was creating it. This just adds to how happy I am of the final outcome.
I would revise and organize my paragraphs to show more of the connections between my mentors work and my work. I feel like I explained who Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was fairly well, but when it came to my piece of work I didn't include that well of an explanation as to why I painted what I did. The most challenging part of this project was, similar to what I said before, was making the connections between my mentors artwork and mine. Trying
Since we are deep into the school year, the grammar is becoming more advanced and difficult to understand. It's really a wakeup call to how demanding and persistent you have to be when it comes to learning a new language. The little things that you learn in the beginning of the first semester add up to grammar like "GO" verbs. Vocabulary is always a fun thing to learn when you are incorporating words into what you want to express. There is a certain pride in knowing a word that you can use clearly and diversely in a sentence.
Learning about my mentor was interesting. I like to consider myself fairly good at art, and seeing the social and cultural differences, and how Sorolla advanced in the art world in the past, is really interesting. He became an orphan at a young age, and signed himself up for art classes. To see the resources I have now that could help me advance in the art world, and comparing that to what Sorolla had and what he ultimately accomplished, is also interesting.
I am the most proud of my painting. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Paint is a really hard medium to use in art, because of the various techniques and strategies it requires you to know if you want your piece to turn out good. Initially, there was definitely some trepidation, but painting is very soothing, (even if your not amazing at it), and almost therapeutic. So not only did my painting turn out good, but a certain level of stress was removed when I was creating it. This just adds to how happy I am of the final outcome.
I would revise and organize my paragraphs to show more of the connections between my mentors work and my work. I feel like I explained who Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was fairly well, but when it came to my piece of work I didn't include that well of an explanation as to why I painted what I did. The most challenging part of this project was, similar to what I said before, was making the connections between my mentors artwork and mine. Trying
Nacido NO en los EEUU/ Born NOT in the USA
Mi Cuento Infantil (My Childrens Book)
Within this project, we were to take all of the elements of spanish we learned during the semester, and create a ten page story book. For the criteria of the storybook, we were to choose a country that spoke Español, and choose a city within that country. We were then required to research a cultural aspect of that city, the climate/weather of that area, and write that into the content of our book. We then illustrated the books, and read them to elementary students who were either bilingual in English and Spanish, or translate the book to English for the ones who weren't. (Which is surprisingly hard, considering you wrote it.)
!Escusha a una grabación de yo leyendo mi cuento infantil sobre la vida en Santa Marta, Colombia!
(Listen to a recording of me reading my children's story about life in Santa Marta, Colombia!)
I have realized that the audio and the video is a little off. I apologize.
La exposición con Del Alma (The exhibition with Del Alma)
For our exhibition of our storybooks, we met up with an Elementary club called Del Alma. Del Alma's purpose is to integrate local cultures (whether it be Hispanic or Native American) into the young lives of Elementary grade students. These students can range from Kindergarten to Fifth grade and have varying degrees of experience with speaking Spanish. The kids were so sweet and shy, and I had a super enjoyable time being able to interact with them and read them my book. After reading our books, the elementary students chose a book in spanish that they wanted us to read. It was very rewarding to see them look at you and smile. A little girl named Blanca told us we had funny accents. I'm sure we did.
Mi reflexión del trabajo (My Reflection About the Project)
I think the most challenging part of this project was the combination of trying to create a story line that you would be able to write well enough, but still having something to give it that little twist of your own, that little edge. Obviously this isn't too apparent in a children's book, but I wanted to make the story line play out so the kids would be engaged when I read it to them. This as well as the factor of taking all that you've learned over the past three months, and mashing together the grammar and the spelling to make what your writing correct. I put a lot of stress into trying to find all the corrections, and to try to make it as smooth as possible. It's hard work when you're just beginning to learn Spanish at a more fluent rate, and reading back I can still see obvious errors in my book. That's what was mostly frustrating to me.
A little side-kick to the story plot and writing element of it was what to draw as the illustrations. You have a limited time to work on all projects obviously, and I had to gauge what, (with the skills I have), was a reasonable amount of detail to put into the pictures. As a student at Animas High School, the expectation to make what teachers call "beautiful work" is high. Not only do the teachers raise the bar, but it's now become a habitable expectation that I set upon myself. I always want to reach my fullest potential in a project, but resources and time are limited and so you have to make compromises constantly. I'll always feel that I could have done better on a project, any project. There are always things to improve on and perfect. But you have to use time management wisely. What reassures me is that I tried my best, and that the outcome was satisfactory to some extent. I guess that's the perfectionist coming out of me though.
This project was highly enjoyable. The extent of simple creativity that was required, how that was stirred into the content we were learning in Spanish class, and the freedom we had within the project all made for an excellent outcome that came with lots of smiles.
A little side-kick to the story plot and writing element of it was what to draw as the illustrations. You have a limited time to work on all projects obviously, and I had to gauge what, (with the skills I have), was a reasonable amount of detail to put into the pictures. As a student at Animas High School, the expectation to make what teachers call "beautiful work" is high. Not only do the teachers raise the bar, but it's now become a habitable expectation that I set upon myself. I always want to reach my fullest potential in a project, but resources and time are limited and so you have to make compromises constantly. I'll always feel that I could have done better on a project, any project. There are always things to improve on and perfect. But you have to use time management wisely. What reassures me is that I tried my best, and that the outcome was satisfactory to some extent. I guess that's the perfectionist coming out of me though.
This project was highly enjoyable. The extent of simple creativity that was required, how that was stirred into the content we were learning in Spanish class, and the freedom we had within the project all made for an excellent outcome that came with lots of smiles.