Welcome! I have the honor of teaching Spanish to the amazing students at Summerfield Elementary School. In addition to this website, I also maintain a class Google Doc, which can be found at tinyurl.com/sfspn (no spaces). My goal is to make Spanish as comprehensible, relevant, and engaging as possible.

Many parents ask what they can do to help their children with Spanish. The most important thing is to be supportive of the class and to encourage learning and using Spanish. My Google Doc lists what students learn each week, resources that were used during class, and extra resources to further explore; although I don't expect memorization or error avoidance.

Research shows that people learn languages by trying to understand what they hear and read during real communication with a purpose, such as to learn or give new information, to build social relationships, or for entertainment. Click here to read the full version of my teaching philosophy along with what is and isn't helpful when it comes to learning a language.

Students who put forth a good effort and follow class expectations will be successful in my class. This year I'm focusing on these four expectations:

• Always try to understand what's being said in Spanish
• Let me know if you don't understand what something means or what's asked of you
• Respect everyone and everything in the room, including your classmates' learning
• Respond to the attention signals as quickly and quietly as you can
  

Students and parents should understand that this is a low-frequency exploratory class. Although students will hopefully improve a tiny bit every time they see me, fluency is not expected. However, they will have a head start in middle school compared to students who have never been exposed to Spanish.

Contact Info

Email: bestr@gcsnc.com

Summefield extension: 1602

Schedule

Spanish Website

As mentioned above, I keep a class Google Doc. It has notes and materials from every year that I've taught here. There are also websites to practice and learn even more.

I recommend keeping it bookmarked. You can review what we did in class, get caught up if you were absent, and go beyond what we cover at school. Let me know if any links no longer work.

You can click the following or type it with no spaces: tinyurl.com/sfspn