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¡Bienvenidos a la pagina de Senorita Cate!
Welcome back from summer everyone! I hope you had a great summer and are ready for an even better school year. I have uploaded some information to my webpage and will continue to do so throughout the year. Make sure you check out the calendar section for your specific grade since that will have information about what we do in class each week.
As always, feel free to email me anytime if you have questions or concerns: amy.cate@mnps.org.
General Info about Spanish Classes
Goals:
*To make the students' first experience with Spanish a positive and empowering one so that they will continue into higher levels.
*To help students become more intentional learners by training them to anticipate and reflect.
*To give students a sound basis to continue on to higher levels of language learning.
*To enable students to begin communicating in another language by building a structure for language learning, focusing on important vocabulary and grammar.
Chapter Challenge: This is a project or presentation of some kind done at the end of a unit that allows the student to "show what they know" from each unit of study. It is presented at the BEGINNING of each new unit so that students know what is important in each unit. This also allows them to plan ahead and have time to think creatively about how they will show me what they know. For more information look for the Chapter Challenge attachments on the 7th or 8th grade pages.
Assessment of Chapter Challenge: Chapter Challenges are graded using the MYP Subject Area Assessment Criteria. These rubrics are on the Assessment Page. They include rubrics that assess speaking, writing and reading comprehension.
Schedule Board: Every week, I update the schedule board in my classroom. This board will include daily work, home work and reminders for long term assignments. I also post a schedule for each week on this website. You can find a link to the WEEKLY CALENDAR on the left of this page.
Grading: Generally, I don't grade papers during the week. I typically grade on Sunday nights for each week. If you check Gradespeed on Monday morning, you will find the most recent updates to your students' grade. I use the TOTAL POINTS system. My homework assignments are out of 20 points, quizzes are out of 30-80 points, projects are out of 70-100 points and tests are always worth 100 points. Please contact me if you have questions about this sytem or your students' grades. I assess students in both a test format and a presentation/project/chapter challenge format so that I build on each student's strengths. If they are not a good test-taker, they need to focus on having an exceptional chapter challenge. If they do not typically do well on projects or presentations, they need to focus on doing well on my tests.
Daily Warm Ups/Homework Passes: Students can earn up to 20 points of extra credit EACH WEEK by doing (and checking) their daily warmups. These are usually five questions on the overhead that serve to review and help students practice both recent and older knowledge and skills.
Notecards: Notecards are the grammar notes for each chapter. Students write these in their bound index cards so at the end of the chapter they have a concise, clear explanation in their own words of the important grammar points from the chapter. These are a grade at the end of each semester.
Portfolio: This year students will be asked to keep a portfolio. In my class, this portfolio consists of important work from the nine weeks. Students will collect work as we go throughout the nine weeks. At the end they will do a reflection to examine their growth or lack thereof in all areas. The list of portfolio entries/collections is on the 7th or 8th grade link on the front page.
General Info about Ms. Cate
My name is Amy Cate and I have been at JT Moore since 2003. My B.S. is in Spanish with a double major in Secondary Education from Vanderbilt. I also have my Masters in Education Administration from Lipscomb University.
I am originally from Somerset, KY but all of my extended family lives here in Nashville.
Most summers I spend my time traveling! The summer after I graduated from college, I went on a 6-week mission trip to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala where I worked in an orphanage and a medical and dentistry clinic. I was able to return to Guatemala in the summer of 2009 in the same capacity. I have also been to Costa Rica, Italy, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, England, Scotland, France, Spain and Romania. I have taken students to Spain, Italy, England and France.
In 2008, I was honored to be chosen as the Metro Nashville Public Schools MIddle School Teacher of the Year.
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