Spanish teacher Jamie Marshall considers projects as a good way to help students learn and finds them very useful.
“I really want [students] to be able to increase their vocabulary … it also provides an opportunity for them to improve their overall speaking skills,” Marshall said.
A project for her Spanish three class is the recycled art project. This will include taking things like cans and other recyclable materials, collected by Marshall, the cafeteria and other teachers, and turning them into art.
She also provides materials such as paint, glue, scissors, and whatever else students need to create their artwork.
“The creativity that comes to life when [students] creating these items is enjoyable to see,” Marshall said.
After creating their art, the students have to describe what their artwork is to her in Spanish. This marks the end of Spanish three and tests students to see how well their speaking and vocabulary has flourished in a more practical setting.

Marshall’s classes also finished an activity that allowed students to try tropical fruits from Colombia and Arepas. This activity was also a form of treat for the students’ hard work.
She strives to make each activity interactive, project based, and have real life connections.
“The students … they just really enjoy [the projects], ” Marshall said.
French teacher Carla Barker often incorporates music into her lessons to help students understand the language.
“I create my activities so they are meaningful and relevant to students and strive to incorporate communication skills in French,” Barker said.
Barker often introduces a new song to her classes each Monday. Students listen to the song without subtitles and write down words they hear often.
Barker chooses different songs each week from different genres and different french-speaking cultures in the world.
“My hope is that students will find an artist, song or genre they like enough to explore other songs and listen outside of class, in addition to teaching the different countries where French is spoken,” Barker said.
The students also participate in a competition called Manie Musicale, a parody of March Madness.
It started in 2017 with two schools participating, and now there were 4000 different schools from 23 different countries participating.There are 16 french songs and teachers from around the world sign their classes up to participate.

Students fill out brackets of their predicted winners and then vote for their favorites starting from the beginning of March to the end of April. Barker’s classes have been doing this since 2019 and whoever predicts the results most correctly, gets a T-shirt while all other participants receive stickers.
Also for the first time, she had two students who predicted the champion and second place winner which made her feel excited.
“If you have a song that you enjoy listening to,” Barker said. “You memorize the words and that is a wonderful and fun way to learn a language.”