Relfexion: Nacido NO en los EEUU

   For this project, we wrote children's stories and read them to bilingual children.  Most of my class had an exhibition last Wednesday and Thursday, but I was out of town for that time, instead reading with Natalie to Luca, a teacher's son.
   I really enjoyed this project!  I like Spanish, and I write a lot of stories in my free time so this was a great project for me.  By doing this, it allowed us to put to use the rules that we learned in class and helped stretch my word usage.  I think that this was a very good way for us to put to use multiple skills and to really work with what we've learned, because before this project, when free writing I often left behind the rules that we'd just learned, which doesn't really work.
   Honestly, I am more proud of the Durango side of this story, just because I had to start rushing with the photoshopping of my Valparaiso story.  I was shocked by how time-consuming it would be to draw out and digitally edit each and every picture but even those turned out alright, I feel, considering.  Overall, this was a very fun project!

   So, as I mentioned above, I did not do the exhibition with the rest of my classmates.  So, yesterday, my advisor Jessica brought her son in to read with a friend, Natalie, and me!  It was really fun!  However, about halfway through my story he decided that he wanted to sit on the floor, and I stayed sitting on my chair.  This was fine but then I needed to angle the book more towards him and I tried reading it to him while reading it upside-down like I would with an English book.  Reading Spanish like that was a lot harder than I'd thought it would be!  It worked out though, and I really enjoyed the reading.  Thanks!

My story!

This is the reading of my Spanish story!  I made a video of it, corresponding to the pages.  We're having issues though, so I will upload it in a bit.  Here is the audio recording though!  http://www.box.com/s/r8oyt1zrmoktqghkiot2

Self Evaluation

Hey there!  So, this is my self evaluation for the Spanish book that I wrote in class.  I unfortunately was not able to do the exhibition last Thursday due to family matters, but I will be reading to the eleventh grade Humanities teacher Jessica's son Luca tomorrow, which I'm really excited for!!

My Self-Evaluation:

23.5 is the highest score I would give myself on this project.  This is because although I’ve met all of the requirements, two of the pages were accidentally flipped in my book and I failed to notice it until after I’d ordered.  Also, despite paying an extra ten dollars a week before the book was due for express shipping, the book still hasn’t actually arrived, eight days later.  I would be fine with a B too though for these issues, because I should have taken more tie to go over my book and check for these errors, I wasn’t actually there for exhibition (though that couldn’t be helped), and the fact that my book isn’t here.  However, I’ve worked incredibly hard to photoshop the pages and I wanted to make my book the best it could be.  So I do believe that the effort put into the book does reflect beautiful work, mostly because of the time and effort, and especially in my Durango pages where I photoshopped images from my own life for the story.  I tried to make sure that the text was always clear to read and that the pages were interesting, something that you’d want to look at if you were young.  So this is what I believe.

Born NOT in the USA/ Nacido NO en los EEUU: Mis cuentos infantiles

To exercise our understanding of Spanish vocabulary and build on our usage of Spanish, we wrote children's books (cuentos infantiles) in Spanish, describing a day in our lives in Durango, and a day in our lives if we lived in another country.  These we will read to children at Needham and Park Elementary next Wednesday and Tuesday as an exhibition.

This is the first page of my Durango story!

   Un Día En Durango: a day in Durango.  This follows my daily routine right here at home!.  Each of the pictures I took with my camera and then photoshopped, making them more colorful and look like they were painted.

The first page of my Chile story!

   Un Día en Valparaíso, Chile: these pages were trickier to create due to the fact that I didn't want to make a really long bibliography following my story.  So I drew up pictures for each page and then photoshopped them and added filters to give them textures.  It has taken a long time but I'd like to send them to Shutterfly and have a picture book sent back to me.  With any luck I'll finish that tonight and be ready to send them in!

   After our reading, I'll post a recording of me reading the story, and a reflection of the exhibition with Del Alma and of the project overall.  Until then,

¡Adiós!