In Roslynn Gaitero's classroom, third graders have been diligently working to build a solid foundation in Spanish. As she explains, "In third grade, students focus on strengthening all skill areas, including speaking, writing, reading and listening comprehension." This includes practicing the days of the week, identifying physical and personality traits by using gender-neutral adjectives, and building sentences with verb conjugations in the present tense, such as hablar (to talk) and irregular verbs like tener (to have) and ser (to be). 

An important part of the course involves "exploring the influences of the Indigenous, European and African cultures found throughout the Spanish-speaking world." Paired with their more skill-based learning, students "listen to various songs from Puerto Rico and the indigenous Quechua people of Ecuador and Perú, as well as watch videos from Spain, Chile and México about the weather, colors, greetings, verbs, cultural holidays and traditions."

As the school year continues, students will learn adjective-noun agreement, definite and indefinite nouns and cardinal numbers 0-1,000. Roslynn also has plans for a "fashion show during their unit on clothing and mini-commercials when they study food." Through engaging lessons and activities, students will continue to grow their listening comprehension and conversational skills – preparing them for their future language study.