World Languages: The Kitchen Edition

If your fourth grader suddenly raided the pantry for unhealthy snacks and said “Señora Chelsoi made me do it,” she was telling the truth! Fourth graders in Kenna Chelsoi’s Spanish class ended up in their kitchens to explain what they had learned in Lucy’s Wesson’s science class. The science lesson was about the nutrients your body needs to stay healthy. Señora Chelsoi asked girls to translate that to Spanish. Sophia Wilson was quick to come up with examples. 
Distance learning has transported Hutchison’s creative teaching to homes across the Mid-South. So, if your fourth grader raided the pantry for unhealthy snacks and said “Señora Chelsoi made me do it,” she was telling the truth! Hutchison’s award-winning World Languages program applies language to everyday situations and different subjects for better learning.

“It is important for kids to learn language in context,” says Kenna Chelsoi, who teaches Spanish in early childhood and lower school. “Kids can make connections to real life situations or other disciplines thus making the learning meaningful.”
 
Chelsoi and her colleagues in “special” subjects regularly team up with teachers in other disciplines for the cross-disciplinary approach to learning that is a hallmark of the Hutchison experience.
 
In Lucy Wesson’s science class, girls learned about the nutrients a body needs to stay healthy. The fourth graders tested for fats, carbohydrates, and starch in the science lab and learned about how food moves through the digestive system. Chelsoi followed up with Spanish vocabulary words tied to food chemistry. In this instance, moving the lesson plan to the kitchen table was an easy call.
 
“World languages are learned more easily when introduced in the context of everyday living and situations in the students’ daily lives,” says Lynn Tian, who teaches Chinese and posted a very timely video with handwashing instructions in Chinese for her students.
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Hutchison is the leading private girls school in Memphis for ages 2 years old through twelfth grade.