The Socorro Independent School District celebrated students’ bilingualism, biliteracy and cultural pride at its second annual Spanish Spelling Bee on Jan. 22 in Montwood High School’s auditorium.
Forty students in third to fifth grade in the SISD Dual Language Academy participated in the nail-biting competition, which required participants not only to spell the word correctly in Spanish but also to include accents and diereses.
Liam Chavira, a fifth grader at Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School, was a little nervous before the competition began, especially with an audience full of parents and friends watching him. However, practicing for the contest at school and at home with his mom helped to boost his confidence.
“First, I read the whole list, and then my mom dictated them to me, and I wrote them down and spelled them out for her,” Chavira said in Spanish.
Similar to a traditional spelling bee, participants took turns spelling multisyllabic words assigned to them by their coach. Each student wrote the word on a whiteboard before spelling it aloud, following proper Spanish grammatical rules. The first round featured all spellers. Each subsequent round included only those spellers who spelled their word correctly in the previous round. Contestants were from the dual language programs at Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School, Myrtle Cooper Elementary School, Hueco Elementary School and Bill Sybert School.
Leonardo Vaquera from Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School won first place, while Idaly Delgado from Myrtle Cooper Elementary School claimed second place. They will advance to compete at the Region 19 Spanish Spelling Bee in February.
The SISD Dual Language Academy teaches students to become bilingual and biliterate in English and Spanish through rigorous instruction and multicultural experiences.
Eduardo Reyes, SISD dual language instructional officer, said teachers in the dual language program emphasize Spanish phonetics to help students build cross‑linguistic connections because the Spanish language arts have their own criteria.
“So, one of our goals in practicing phonetics is for children to learn whether a word has an accent mark, if it has consonant clusters, and where they hear the emphasis of the stressed syllable,” Reyes said in Spanish. “So, all these things, the Spanish teachers encourage this in their classrooms to promote the Spanish language.”
During the competition, third-grader Adalie Garcia from Hueco Elementary School stepped up to the microphone on stage. She was proud of herself when she correctly spelled the word "mejorar" or improve in English. Garcia and her fellow contestants had been practicing for the competition after school and at home for several months.
“I’m excited and a little bit nervous,” Garcia said. “(The Spanish Spelling Bee) teaches me how to write words and spell, and like sound out the letters.”