This hardcore project had Oswaldo Ordonez’s Spanish 1 students utilizing a lot of innovation, creativity and time management skills.
And of course – they spoke a lot of Spanish.
Ordonez teaches world cultures and international Spanish at Cane Bay Middle. Spanish 1 is a high school credit class consisting of eighth-graders.
To really get his students submerged in the Spanish language and Spanish-speaking countries, Ordonez organized a two-day Spanish Festival Celebration that started April 22 (the second part was scheduled to take place the following Monday).
The “festival” consisted of his students leading presentations to their fellow schoolmates to teach them about the different Spanish-speaking countries they have learned about in class. His students were split into groups of four and each group was assigned a different country. His students have been hard at work researching their assigned countries for the past three months and learning about the overall culture of that country.
These were very elaborate projects that involved public speaking (including doing so in another language), lots of research and understanding of other countries and time management – and Ordonez gave his students high remarks for their work.
“They just went way above what I was expecting and I could not be more proud of them,” he said.
For the festival, the groups set up tables throughout the hallways of Cane Bay Middle for the duration of their class period, and other classes were invited to swing by the different tables to learn all about these countries.
Each student in every group had speaking parts: they would first deliver tidbits of information about their assigned country totally in Spanish, and then they would translate what they just said in English. Students covered a lot of different topics in their presentations – they would talk about their country’s cuisine, religion, traditions, notable places to visit, sports and entertainment, music and more.
The students would speak to onlookers as though they represented a traveling agency and were trying to sell their schoolmates on taking a trip to the assigned country; the students made brochures, 3D models of iconic places, slideshow presentations, and also made giant maps of their countries with specific cities and points of interest labeled for onlookers to check out. Students even handed out their own “business cards”, and created social media links for onlookers to go online and learn more about the countries.
Students also gave out little party favors and souvenirs to visitors after their presentations – lots of groups gave out candy from their countries.
One group of girls presented about Colombia during the Friday event; they said they learned Colombia is a very unique place with major cities to visit.
Deauna Ancrum said learning about Colombia has made them want to visit the country for real – “we basically did,” she said, referring to all the research they acquired.
A group of boys led a presentation about Brazil on the same day; Jackson Hedges echoed similar thoughts, saying there are a lot things in Brazil he and his teammates now want to see in person.
“For me, since I play soccer, it would be to go to a soccer game,” he said (soccer is a popular sport in Brazil).
Another group of girls led a presentation about Peru; all four of them wore their hair in braids for the festival because they learned it is a traditional Peruvian hairstyle.
A favorite – yet kind of bizarre – fact they learned about Peru is how the natives enjoy eating guinea pigs.
“I was really loving this,” Sonan Adams said. “It’s so different; most people hear that and they’re like, ‘Ew’, but it’s normal to them.”