In this project students chose or created a Latin recipe and translated it into Spanish commands, using our new knowledge on how to word commands in Spanish. We created cooking segments or how-to videos around our recipes.
El Proyecto De La Biografia:
Through this project students were challenged to research people with Latin origin and write and rehearse a biography from their point of view. We then recorded and presented our biographies, through this we learned and practiced Spanish verbs in the past tense. The photo above is of a piece that is, as the Spanish artist statement above states, in the style of Pablo Delgado's street art. The photo on the right is a piece of Pablo Delgado's actual work.
In our Dia de los Muertos project we learned many things about this day, such as the history and purpose of it, as well as advancing and furthering our Spanish vocabulary and knowledge. Dia de los muertos is meant to be a joyous holiday where one’s life is celebrated rather than mourning their passing. Death is also thought of rather lightly and they make this holiday very upbeat and positive. We began this project by gaining some background knowledge on this holiday that the things that go into it, whether it be learning that Aztecs were colonized and influenced by Christianity or learning what goes into a traditional calavera poem. We wrote short passages about someone near to us that we lost. I chose to write about my grandfather for my memorial piece, others chose pets or celebrity idols. We also wrote Calaveras, Spanish poems that usually tell a story and/or make a joke of a person, type of person or group, or an occupation. For my first calavera I wrote about a tattoo artist whose clients bones fall apart while she is tattooing. I made somewhere around six drafts of this first one because I wanted it perfect for the exhibition. I also drew a corresponding image and was so proud of my work I decided to enter it in a Dia de los Muertos art show. As for my second calavera I spent about the same amount of time on it but produced about three drafts, this may have been because I knew I wanted to exhibit the other and thought I didn’t need such high quality in my second. Overall, through this experience, I learned more Spanish than I did new things about Mexican culture because I had learned most of these things in the past. One thing I did not know was that marigolds are used with death related things because they apparently smell like corpses.
El Raro Que Soy:
Project Reflection:
In this project we wrote letters describing ourselves to students in Mexico that are learning English and vice versa. We began by answering some questions about ourselves, our families, school and things that we like to do. We also created a visual piece for this project, a autorretrato tipografico, or typographic self-portrait. On this self-portrait one specific thing that I learned was how to state basic characteristics of a person in Spanish. Considering that I knew little to no descriptive words, nor did I know how to put them together so that they make sense, I would say that my ability to do so has largely improved. I feel as though my art piece definitely shows beautiful work because it really is a self-portrait, and does look like me, which was the goal. I feel like I also incorporated a nice amount of color and a good level of cleanliness to it. If I had the chance to refine anything on this project I would want to write the words on my portrait differently, I think that the font I created can be a bit hard to read.