For the past few weeks grade 3 and 4 students have been learning about Victorian birds and how to describe their features in Spanish. We used the fantastic search tool from the website http://birdlife.org.au/all-about-birds/australias-birds/find-a-bird to find a bird from Victoria. Then we sketched it adding lots of detail to make a scientific illustration. The drawings needed to include enough features so a good scientist could recognise the species of the bird just by looking at them. We painted our birds with acrylic paint and then painted a background representing where the bird lives. On the margins we wrote a description of the birds using the Spanish and the verbs es("is") and tiene("has"). We have learnt that in Spanish the adjective goes after the noun: in Spanish we say plumas rojas(which literally translates to "feathers red") or cola larga ("tail long") etc. We used these word cards on the word wall to learn the order of the words.