Lincoln-Way East Teacher Transforms Classroom into Spanish Market

—from Lincoln-Way District 210

Photo: From left: Mariah O’Donoghue, Jamie Schneider, and Francesca Persiani practice their Spanish during the “El Mercado” lesson at East.

Lincoln-Way East teacher Julia Seidel transformed the classroom into an “el Mercado” or Spanish Market this week to give her Spanish Two students an opportunity to practice and improve their vocabulary.

“Students have been learning about the vocabulary used in an open air market, the perspective of a merchant and customer and the bargaining process,” Seidel said. “I wanted to give students a fun way to demonstrate their vocabulary acquisition in an authentic real-world application.”

Sophomore Francesca Persiani said she enjoyed the interactive lesson. She used sentences like – “?Me puede rebajar el precio?” or “Can you lower the price?”

Students brought two items to sell in the market and were split into two groups, merchants and customers; they reversed roles half-way through the class. Seidel provided fake Chilean pesos for students to purchase their items.

Luke Lynn said he asked the students playing el Mercado vendors how much items cost and enjoyed debating the prices in Spanish.

“It puts what we are learning into perspective to use it in a real situation,” said sophomore Jamie Schneider.

“It was a really exciting day and the students were very engaged and enthusiastic,” Seidel said.