Marcellus Senior High School Spanish Students Teach Lessons at K.C.Heffernan Elementary School and Driver Middle School

One of the great instructional benefits of a one campus school setting is the opportunity for younger students to learn from their older peers. This benefit is coming to fruition during the months of March and April as students from Shelly Marsh’s Marcellus Senior High School Spanish classes are visiting classes at Driver Middle School and K.C. Heffernan Elementary School to teach Spanish language lessons. Teachers participating in the “foreign language exchange” program include Rose Battaglia/KCH third grade, George Mango/DMS 6^th Grade, and Nancy van der Ven/DMS 6^th grade. The high school students will be teaching lessons over a six week period with the first lesson taking place on March 4, 2011. A visit to Battaglia’s classroom on Friday, March 4^th found high school Spanish student instructors Lexie Novak, Nora Barry, Gregg Treleaven, Melissa Lee, Alan Donohoe, and Eric Morris deep in the middle of their first Spanish lesson. Third grade students had translated their own name and were proudly displaying their “Spanish” names on a name tag necklace. Once the name tags were created the high school group introduced the following phrases:

· Halo – Hello

· Me llamo – I am called insert name.

· Coma te llamas? – What are you called

The 3^rd grade learners then had the opportunity to practice their newly learned Spanish phrases as their older peers moved about the room helping each pair of students with the pronunciation of the Spanish words.