Welcome Parents,
I just wanted to introduce myself and give you a little information about our class. My name is Señora Angela Dykstra. I am your child's Spanish Teacher here at New Vision Charter School k-4 campus. I have been teaching Spanish at NVCS for 1.5 years and I am so excited to continue learning and growing with your kiddos this year. At NVCS our class looks a little different than typical language classes.
Most likely, if you took a second language in school, you were in a traditional class: you memorized vocabulary lists and dialogues, filled in grammar worksheets and practiced your verb conjugations. And if you are like most parents I talk to, you'll say, "I took high school French/ Spanish/ German/ etc. and I don't remember any of it." That's because humans don't learn language by memorizing vocabulary lists and filling out grammar worksheets! Your own children acquired their first language because they received "abundant, comprehensible input" (according to Dr. Krashen, linguist and researcher). Essentially, you spoke to them, read to them, and sang to them in their first language, and that is how they learned to speak.
Here at NVCS, we do things differently. We believe that students acquire their second language the same way they acquired their first language. That means that my job as their teacher is to load them full of abundant, personalized, comprehensible input, or in other words, Spanish that they can understand. This looks vastly different than a traditional Spanish classroom. In our classes, we read stories, sing songs, discuss culture, talk about their lives, and play games, all as vehicles to deliver Spanish that they understand.
Please feel free to email me throughout the year with questions or comments. I value parent communication and I will do my best to respond promptly.
Looking forward to an amazing school year,
Angela Dykstra
New Vision Charter School
k-4 Spanish teacher
Adykstra@newvisioncharterschool.org