March

March 6

We finished 2 line of Kakko.

Talked about interesting facts about Gujarat and few inspiring stories about Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s childhood.

February

February 20

This week we had a fun class where we tried to learn Gujarati in different ways. The students tried to say some Gujarati tongue twisters, listened to stories, and learnt games that would help them with Gujarati. We are going to continue to implement some of these strategies to teach Gujarati. Next week we are going to solidify the second line of letters in the blue book and then continue to learn the third line!

For the final presentation, we have decided on 2 options. Students can either tell a story in Gujarati with some acting or create a cooking recipe video in Gujarati.

Here are some guidelines:

1. Have the student visible in the frame in the video. Have only the student visible in the frame, but parents should be there to record and monitor the students.

2. Have a minimum of 80% Gujarati usage.

3. Have it around 2-5 minutes in duration (longer than the video example provided below)

4. Have the students introduce themselves with their name, school, and grade in Gujarati in the beginning.

There is an example of a cooking recipe video here.

The video MUST be submitted BEFORE April 10th. HATS Spring Break will fall on April 3rd (no classes April 3rd). We want to help students complete this project, so please let us know if you have any questions.

Along with this, we will all be singing “O Ishwar Bajiye Tane” as a class. Please have the students know as much of this as they can. Next class, we will record it and send it out so the students can practice on their own

December

December 12

We had a wonderful Gujarati class this week! The new letters we introduced last week were further solidified during class this week through repetition and guidance. We had the students take turns pronouncing the Gujarati letters in order. Along with pronunciation, they are also learning how to write these letters. We hope that soon they will be able to form words with the letters that they are learning. This week, we also talked more about how to say the names of certain body parts in Gujarati. The ones that the students should know include: eye (aak), nose (naak), mouth (modhu), hair (vaal), ear (kaahn), and hand (haath). For the final part of class, we told the story of Krishna and the Akshaya Patra in Gujarati. Stories are an important part of learning languages, so we hope to tell some new ones each week. We ended class by singing "O Ishwar Bhajiye Tane".

HOMEWORK:

Memorize the first two lines of the Gujarati Kukulkanes found in the blue book that we covered in class!

December 5

This week we covered a lot in Gujarati class! We started class by learning and going over more of the Gujarati Kukko (Alphabet). We introduced a new section of the alphabet that we hope to solidify in the next few weeks. The students did a great job demonstrating what they learned in class. They were able to tell a story in Gujarati (last week's homework) and have shown amazing progression in Gujarati. We are proud that they can do this in an online format. During class, we also learned how to say 6 parts of the body in Gujarati. These included the eye (aak), nose (naak), mouth (modhu), hair (vaal), ear (kaahn), and hand (haath). We will learn more parts of the body and other useful words in Gujarati in the future. We ended this week's class by singing "O Ishwar Bhajiye Tane".

HOMEWORK:

• On page 11 of the blue book, complete the first 3 rows of boxes for the first line of letters and 1 row of boxes for the second line of letters.

• Know how to say the six body parts in Gujarati and where they are located. Associate the part of the body with the Gujarati word!

November

November 21

We had another great week of Gujarati class. This week we reviewed our letters from ક to ટ. We have progressed very nicely in learning Kukko. We hope to start learning words and small phrases soon. During class we also worked on the numbers again to provide a good refresher. We told a story and ended class with "O Ishwar Bajye Tane". We will get an audio version out of that on the Whatsapp group next week so everyone can practice at home if needed. We want to be comfortable singing it for Annual Day! The homework for this week is listed below.

Homework:

Have a story ready COMPLETELY IN GUJARATI. It can be short, it does not have to be as long as the ones we tell in class.

Write the following numbers 2x:

• ૧ (1)

• ૨ (2)

• ૩ (3)

• ૪ (4)

• ૫ (5)

• ૬ (6)

• ૭ (7)

• ૮ (8)

• ૯ (9)

• ૧૦ (10)

Write the following letters 3x:

• ક (ka)

• ખ (kha)

• ગ (ga)

• ઘ (gha)

• ચ (cha)

• છ (chhe)

• જ (ja)

• ઝ (za)

• ટ (ta)

November 14

In class this week, we continued learning the Gujarati Kukko. We learned the next three letters: જ (ja) ઝ (za) ટ (ta). We thought that there was an added complexity with writing these letters to those that we covered before, so we are giving homework that will help solidify these letters. So far we have covered 9/47 letters! Next week, we are going to start introducing words and how to form them with what we have learned so far. After the learning more of the Kukko, we heard a story from the students in English. We translated the stories in Gujarati after they told them. Then, we went over some wild animals and the names of them. We ended class with singing “O Ishwar Bhajye Tane”.

HOMEWORK:

Make sure you know the names of wild animals found in your book.

November 7

Hope everyone had a great Diwali! In class this week, we started the Gujarati Kukko, or Alphabet. Previously, we had the students work on writing letters with a common base shape. We have worked on the letters with similar bases for a few weeks now and we will continue to review them in future classes. The Gujarati Kakko is in a specific order that is easy to memorize similar to how it is easy to memorize the order of the English Alphabet. The students already know some of the letters so we hope it's easy to learn. We will be going through the Kakko throughout all of the future classes. During this class, we covered the first six letters of the Gujarati Kakko which included: ક (ka), ખ (kha), ગ (ga), ઘ (gha), ચ (cha), and છ (chhe). After we practiced the first few letters in the Kakko, we transitioned to a story. The story was about a mouse and its tails. The story was one that helped students review their numbers from one through ten in Gujarati. We ended class like always by singing "Oh Ishwar Bhajiye Tane". We hope the students are comfortable with singing the first line after this week.

HOMEWORK:

- Write the following letters 3 times

ક (ka)

ખ (kha)

ગ (ga)

ઘ (gha)

ચ (cha)

છ (chhe)

October

October 31

We had a great class this week. We started off with a review of what we learned. The students were told to write ડ, ક, ફ, હ, ઠ, ર, શ, સ, ચ, અ again during the class to see how much they retained the letters. We also did some short exercises that allowed them to identify the letter and associate it with the sound it makes. Next week, we are planning to have a short check-in quiz to evaluate how much we need to work on these 10 letters. This upcoming class, we are going to introduce 5 new letters. After completing our writing section of the class, we transitioned over to the speaking section. During this time, we encouraged the students to talk as much as they knew how to say in Gujarati. All of the students know a few basic questions that we are using as a foundation to expand upon. They asked and answered these questions throughout this time. Next, we told a story in Gujarati about a group of pigeons and a hunter that some of you may be familiar with. We wanted to see how much everyone could comprehend when listening to Gujarati. The story was told by us, but we used a supplementary video (linked here) to help the students understand exactly what was happening. We ended class by reciting "O Ishwar Bhajiye Tane" together. We are hoping that the students are starting to learn a line or two of it. We will send out a link to the prayer in the Whatsapp group soon if you would like to help with practice. Please make sure you do your homework.

October 24

It was great to be back in Gujarati class after having class off last week! This week, we wanted to refresh everyone on the material we had gone over in the prior weeks. We talked about the 10 different letters we learned and the different questions we learned how to ask. After this week we will introduce 5 new letters and a few more new questions. As we repeat these concepts over and over again, we hope to solidify them until they become second nature. At the beginning and end of class, we are learning the prayer "O Ishwar Bhajiye Tane". We will send out an audio recording of it in the Whatsapp group, so that students can practice it at home. It is our plan to present it at Annual Day this school year. The homework for this week is listed below.

HOMEWORK:

- Show your parents that you can count to 10 in Gujarati

- Ask your parents questions that you learned in Gujarati

- Write the following letters 2x

ડ - da

ક - ka

ફ - fa (pha)

હ - ha

ઠ - tha

ર - ra

શ - sa

સ -sha

ચ - cha

અ - aa (uh)

October 10

This week in Gujarati we reviewed the letters that we had learned so far. This included the five “S-shaped” letters (ડ, ક, ફ, હ, ઠ) and the five “2-shaped” letters (ર, શ, સ, ચ, અ). After a bit of review, we transitioned to learning about the first 10 numbers in Gujarati. This week we focused on writing the first 5 numbers and counting to 10. Next week, students will learn how to write the next 5 numbers. After learning the numbers, we finished class by telling a Gujarati story. We hope to expose the students to reading, writing, and speaking every week. The homework for this week is listed below.

HOMEWORK:

Write the letters listed below on a piece of paper. It would help to write it the letters in a vertical line.

(Note: You do not need to write the pronunciations out, but please write the numbers in both scripts next to each other.)

ડ - da

ક - ka

ફ - fa (pha)

હ - ha

ઠ - tha

ર - ra

શ - sa

સ -sha

ચ - cha

અ - aa (uh)

૧ - 1

૨ - 2

૩ - 3

૪ - 4

૫ - 5

October 3

We had another great class this week! During our class this past Sunday, we covered speaking/listening and writing in Gujarati. At the beginning, we reviewed the five Gujarati letters that share the “S” shape, ક(kuh), ફ (fuh), હ (huh), ઠ (tuh) ડ (duh). This week, we started learning the letters with the “2” shape. These letters include ર (ruh), શ (shuh), ય (yuh), સ (sa), ચ (chuh). Next, we listened to a short story in both Gujarati and English. We also worked on learning Gujarati words for common body parts along with other common phrases. There is no homework this week other than to continue reviewing the letters we have learned thus far.

If you have any questions regarding Gujarati class, don’t hesitate to contact us.

September

September 26

We had an excellent first class! Today we held an introduction session followed by a class. If you have any questions regarding Gujarati class, please feel free to contact us. During our class, we covered speaking/listening and writing in Gujarati. We started our class by writing Gujarati. During this time, we went over 5 letters. All of these letters shared the same base “S” shape. These letters included: ક (kuh), ફ (fuh), હ (huh), ઠ (tuh) ડ (duh). We worked on identifying these letters and saying them out loud. Next week, we will further solidify these letters. After the brief writing portion, the students listened to a short Gujarati story. As we went through the story, we identified different words and phrases in Gujarati. This helps with picking up a few Gujarati words and also helps solidify pronunciation of Gujarati. During the last portion of class, we let students speak Gujarati. We went over basic phrases that they would come across when introducing themselves. They were able to tell us what their first and last name was and what grade they were in. We will continue to work on all of these aspects of Gujarati in order to help them achieve a firm understanding of the language. To help the students retain what they learned, they have a short homework assignment this week. It is listed below.

HOMEWORK:

Write all 5 of the following Gujarati letters two times: ક (kuh), ફ (fuh), હ (huh), ઠ (tuh) ડ (duh)

We want the students to be able to identify the letters to the best of their abilities. We will be assessing their understanding on the 5 letters next week.