Middle School Spanish Students Become Published Authors

Our eighth-grade advanced Spanish students launched the first printed edition of their newspaper, EL OSO (“The Bear”). This year, the students expanded the project to include seventh-grade Advanced students, strengthening collaboration across grade levels within the Middle School Spanish program. This project has been running digitally for almost three years in 8th Grade Advanced Spanish, and for the first time, the students took the initiative to design a print edition to share it with the SFS community to celebrate their creativity and hard work.

EL OSO is an opportunity for Advanced Spanish students not only to utilize their Spanish skills but also to collaborate as a class to create a published piece that requires brainstorming articles, interviews, editing, design, and photography selection—developing the newspaper solely in Spanish challenges the students to express themselves creatively in another language.

“I started EL OSO because I wanted my students to see Spanish not just as a class, but as a living language. The newspaper gives them a real-world platform and an authentic audience, transforming grammar and vocabulary into storytelling, journalism, and meaningful communication. When students become writers, interviewers, editors, and designers, they take ownership of their learning and begin to see themselves as confident bilingual communicators. Watching them publish something entirely in Spanish, and now hold it in print, is incredibly powerful,” shares Sandra Suárez, Spanish Teacher, 8th Grade Advisor, and Spanish Curriculum Coordinator.

Seventh-Grade Advanced Spanish students also became published authors through their project with StoryJumper, a platform designed for students and teachers to develop storybooks. Each student developed their own printed book about Alebrijes. They are fantastical Mexican folk art sculptures of mythical creatures, created from papier-mâché by Pedro Linares in the 1930’s, blending parts of different animals with intense colors and patterns. After studying Alebrijes in Spanish class, designing their own creatures, they created original stories about the magical origins of each.

Congratulations to our Middle School Advanced Spanish students for their accomplishments!