Lower School students celebrated the end of Hispanic Heritage Month with a music and dance-filled celebration at this week’s Tuesday morning assembly. Leading up to the assembly, each grade level PreK through Grade 5 studied a different Latin American country, learning about the various cultures, animals, food, flags, and traditional dances.

Spanish Teacher Monserrat Toledo Díaz said of the unit, “The Hispanic Heritage Month units were designed not only with language acquisition in mind but also to cultivate cultural awareness. Developing this cultural awareness promotes emotional agility in our students and it nurtures a sense of belonging and connection in our Lower School community.”

Music is an important part of language acquisition in Lower School Spanish classes. “We use different songs throughout the school year during the units of inquiry and add dance moves or use props. We also use rhymes and a lot of repetition of small chunks of language. For this specific unit, the goal was to learn traditional children's songs from Spanish speaking countries, so this is all authentic material.” If you’d like to sing along at home, check out the songs that students learned below.

PreK & K  El Coquí
1st Doña Semana
2nd Que Llueva
3rd La Pájara Pinta
4th La Cucaracha
5th El Chiriguare