A student online publication at McDowell High School is bridging the communication barrier between Spanish and English.
La Voz Hispana (The Hispanic Voice) is a new Spanish newsletter written for parents and the community by students from Mariette van der Sluijs’ Spanish for Native Speakers II class.
The class, which helps those who speak Spanish in addition to English, allows students to learn proper grammar and sentence structure.
“This class helps them build their grammar skills just like any English I or English II class does,” said van der Sluijs. “They still have to take those classes. This just helps them perfect the language they already have an understanding of. “
Kids in the class are already hard at work on the next edition of La Voz Hispana, which will feature school news, an entertainment and sports section, and a calendar of important events happening at the high school.
Students have really embraced the new project and many are seeing the results of their hard work.
“The writing has been the hardest part of the newsletter, because we have to get all the accents right,” said Laura Guardian.
Guardian’s classmate, Diana Hernandez, is glad the class is producing something that builds their skills and helps get news out into the community.
“It’s (the newsletter) mostly for people that speak Spanish,” stated Hernandez. “We’re writing this so that they’ll know what’s going on at our school.”
Pedro Lopez and his friend, Jose Camarema, do research for the publication’s music section.
“Right now, we’re looking at Billboard and other music websites,” said Lopez. “We gather our information and then we put it together for our section in the paper.”
Van der Sluijs hopes the project will help them retain some of the skills they have learned in class.
The educator hopes that, in the near future, the group can collect information from every school around the county and put it in their online publication.
For now, students are busy to perfect next month’s issue before deadline.
“We’re collecting information about Valentine’s Day for the front and for the back page we’ll focus on March and leprechauns and stuff like that,” said Maria Martinez while busily clicking through pages of information about the two holidays.
Copies of the newsletter are available electronically by visiting mhs.mcdowell.k12.nc.us.
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