Grade 6 Spanish students win 7 awards on national assessment

Tenemos estudiantes de español muy inteligentes en sexto grado.

All seven students in the Wilbraham & Monson Academy Grade 6 Spanish class with Ms. Andrea Santos received recognition for their performance on this year’s National Spanish Challenge.

This was the first time that members of the Middle School took the NSC, an assessment exam for pupils in Grades 1-6. Five students won the highest honor, a silver ribbon for outstanding achievement: Abbigail Whittier, Julien Olanoff, Damian Hutchinson, Noelle MacDonald and Olivia Fallon. Rania Khan and Makenzie Pierce earned purple ribbons for excellent achievement. The accomplishments came despite the class being held for just two trimesters.

Quotes from World Languages Department Chair Fabienne Dubois

On why she felt it was important to have the Grade 6 Spanish students participate in this contest: “I used to do this for French when I taught at the Middle School, and it was always a great experience as students felt motivated and excited about their results. I felt that Andrea had taught and prepared her sixth graders so well that it would be a great year to start this challenge contest for Spanish. Results are even more impressive, knowing that these students only had half-a-year of Spanish.”

Quotes from Ms. Santos

On what she told her students prior to the test: “The students were looking forward to the challenge. This group showed a strong interest in learning the language and always challenged themselves to succeed. We only had one day of practice on the (Lingco Language Labs) platform and the rest of the practice they did on their own at home because they had already started coding and there was no time left to practice. On the day of the test, they were a little nervous, but I told them to believe in themselves and trust that they had learned the material.”

On how she thought the students would perform: “I knew that they would do very well despite only having studied Spanish for two trimesters. By the time I had finished with this group, I was giving all the classroom instructions in Spanish, and I think we reached the goal of classes that were 90% Spanish and 10% in English.” 

On how she feels the students performed on the test: “They all did very well, and I am very happy for all my students. For this level there are two prizes, a silver ribbon for outstanding performance and a purple ribbon for excellence. We got five silver ribbons and two purple ribbons. It's incredible that every student in the class won a prize considering that it is a national exam. Only one student had ever studied Spanish before and for everyone else it was completely new.”