Did you know that the United Nations (UN) as a community uses six working languages? These include English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

The UN even established International Language Days to help create awareness and respect for the history, culture and achievements of each one. This Monday Monday, April 23rd was International Spanish Language Day. This date also marks the death of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of the masterpiece of Spanish literature, Don Quijote.

As part of a fun week long celebration of the Spanish language and culture Ms. Mata and her Spanish 1 and 2 classes are wearing yellow t-shirts that they designed themselves with the slogan “Keep Calm and Se Tu Mismo” which translates to Keep Calm and Be Yourself as they visit other classrooms in the school to read aloud in Spanish.

spanish world language program at the calais school

Starting on Monday and continuing throughout the week, Ms. Mata’s students have been reading from Clifford the Big Red Dog, Dragons Love Tacos and other fun stories. Before starting each book the students provide a brief synopsis of the story line in English and then read the entire story in Spanish. The class also prepared visual aids which they displayed to make sure everyone was following the story along. The activity has been great for encouraging social interaction, reading and public speaking skills but also was a wonderful way to see how far her students have progressed in their development of Spanish speaking skills.

Spanish Language Fun Fact: Did you know that the average native Spanish speaker uses about 7,000 words.