Julie Evelsizer
The Pantagraph
Brandy Aguirre Cruz went to school Friday wearing a top hat, neck tie and green face paint.
“I have the part of the tadpole in our play,” said 8-year-old Cruz, a third grader at Cedar Ridge Elementary School in Bloomington.
Cruz and her classmates performed a play in Spanish based on the popular Colombian fairy tale, "Rin Rin the Tadpole," to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in October.
Students in the bilingual program at Cedar Ridge studied Spanish-speaking countries and then presented songs, plays and art to fellow students and visiting parents.
Cruz and her classmates studied the country of Colombia.
“I learned about the animals, money and authors,” said Cruz, whose family is Guatemalan.
“This is the home school for most of our kids, but some students are brought here from other local schools for the bilingual program,” said Leslie Romagnoli, English Second Language program coordinator for Unit 5 schools.
Unit 5's ESL program helps bilingual students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade whose first language is not English. Cedar Ridge has the highest number of Spanish-speaking students.
Over the summer, Romagnoli met with Cedar Ridge teachers to map out curriculum on cultural pieces for Spanish-speaking countries. Teachers will continue to focus on the countries throughout the semester.
“The students are excited to share their presentations with their parents and classmates,” said Romagnoli.
Seven-year-old Gael Sanchez Navarro learned about El Salvador in his second grade class. He and his classmates presented facts in Spanish to the crowd and played sacabuche instruments made from cups, leather and pencils.
“I talked about volcanoes in El Salvador,” Navarro said in clear English after the presentation. He started to explain more, but got stuck on a few tough English words. Romagnoli hopped in to help.
“There are things in El Salvador similar to ski lifts that take people up the sides of the volcanoes,” she translated. Navarro nodded.
In another room, a bilingual first grade class lined up to sing a about Guatemala. After the song, they each gave a fact about the country in English. As they were finished, they filed out of the room, but not before 6-year-old Antony Ramierez could dart into the crowd of visiting parents to give his dad a hug.
“I’m glad they have this activity at his school,” said his dad, Adrian Ramirez of Bloomington. “Our family is from Mexico and I don’t want him to forget his country and where we came from.”