COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — Students in a dual-language immersion classroom at Rogers Elementary School in Colorado Springs are building confidence in both English and Spanish, and now they’re taking that love of reading home.
In Nilda Cordero’s third-grade classroom, students spend half the day learning in English and the other half in Spanish. The goal is at least 50% growth by the end of the year, meaning students are ready to move on to fourth grade.
Her class has gone well beyond that benchmark.
“We’re at about a 75% in both languages, so that means that they’ve done a year and a half of growth,” said Cordero.
Nine-year-old Santiago Galvan is one of those students. He started reading in Spanish when he was six and now uses the language outside the classroom too.
“It’s really important because I’m going to Mexico in a few days, and I need to speak Spanish with them,” said Santiago.
Cordero has been with her students since second grade. Heading into the end of the school year, she had one goal in mind.
“I really… tried hard to make them the leaders of their learning,” said Cordero.
Through the Scripps Howard Fund’s “If You Give a Child a Book” campaign, students were able to select five books to build personal libraries at home. Santiago described the selection process.
“We would pick out one Spanish book. One reading level book, one that we want, one book with a toy and one chapter book,” said Santiago.
For students like Santiago, the books are filling a gap.
“It helps me a lot because we don’t have hardly any Spanish books at our house,” said Santiago.
For Cordero, getting books into students’ homes is about more than reading skills.
“I think it’s super important for the students to understand that their traditions and their home is not lost in translation,” said Cordero.
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