Double Duty

Spanish classes teach twice Summer reading program helps students get ahead

WITH creativity and imagination, a jumping child can become a rabbit, an impoverished neighborhood can disappear for a few hours, and school can be fun.

One morning in Leyda Rice’s Spanish reading comprehension class, seven students stopped reading their book, “Juanito Conejito,” when they got to the word “brincas.” At Rice’s bidding, they all jumped around the room like the conejito in the story.

Now, it is much more likely they will remember that “brincas” means “you jump” because they acted out the word, Rice said. That goes for Spanish-speakers as well as English-speakers.

She has both in her class, which meets two hours a day at Shidler Elementary School in Oklahoma City. Students can come and go as they please between the reading class and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department’s Play in the Park program.

Rice’s class is just one of several Oklahoma City public schools for students to catch up with their peers or get ahead for the fall semester.

This summer, the first language of most of Rice’s students is Spanish; most of the students got behind in the school year. About 70 percent of the school’s enrollment is Hispanic. One English-speaking boy attends the class because he will start in a dual-language kindergarten class this fall in which 90 percent of instruction will be in Spanish.

During the school year, dual-language students have a 30-minute English class every day and speak both languages among themselves.

Shidler Principal Sharon Creager said the Spanish-speakers pick up English conversationally.

“A lot of the learning of the other language comes about when there’s a need to know it,” Creager said.

The summer programs help. Except for the two-hour reading class taught entirely in Spanish, most of the day is spent speaking English. Playing board games, basketball and hopscotch – everyday interactions – also build the students’ language skills.

Rice said she had never seen Alfonso “Alfocito” Ruiz speak English until recently when she saw him talking to Caleb Robertson, a soon-to-be kindergarten student who speaks only English.

“I don’t see it when they do it,” Rice said. “It just happens – with other students, with other teachers. We see some of the students in the first year that are having the transition – that are picking up the language.”

In the past weeks, Robertson has been exposed to more Spanish, which was his mother’s goal for the class.

His mother, Susan Robertson, said she taught him what little Spanish she knows. She has taught English as a second language at Shidler and will teach reading in fall.

She chose to put Caleb in the dual-language program because having two languages will make his mind work differently, so he’ll learn more in all subjects, she said. A second language may help him later in school and in the work force.

“If I had that ability, I would be far better off than I am now,” Susan Robertson said.

Plus, she said, her son will reap cultural and social benefits that he wouldn’t in a higher socioeconomic area. She believes he will receive a solid education from the teachers who have toughed it out and been successful in the inner city.

Karina Martinez, 7, has benefited from her teachers at Shidler, too. She successfully completed Rice’s dual-language first-grade class this year, so she doesn’t need the extra help from the summer class, Rice said. But she comes anyway.

“I like to read,” Martinez said. “With my teacher, we have a lot of fun.”

She liked the book “Juanito Conejito,” which had colorful garden pictures.

“It has all the fruits and all that stuff,” she said. “You have to eat the fruits for you to get healthy.”

Rice gets excited about seeing that spark of interest in learning, and many of her students can’t wait to come to her class. Ruiz, 6, hasn’t missed a day of school during the school year or summer, Rice said.

While she spoke, several fourth-graders sneaked out of their group to join Rice’s class.

Rice also enlightens eager minds during the school year.

“Before class even started, they wanted to be in the classroom,” she said.

At the end of the year, she said, she had to physically take them out of the classroom because they didn’t want to leave.

“I see the difference in their life,” Rice said. “Self-esteem is building. They need to know their is a future for them.”



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