 The other native speaker in the class reacted to the perceived insult, stating loudly she was from Columbia and punctuating the remark with a Spanish curse word while Manolo looked down at his desk. After the bell rang, Mrs. S. made a comment to the examiner with a similar observation. 

Mrs. S. was able to provide some basic information about Manolo’s academic background. She was only able to access his high school records, and he is progressing through high school at the expected rate. He has never had IEP accommodations, nor has he ever received assistance from the ESL /ELL program. According to school records, he has regular attendance to both school and Mrs. S’s Spanish II class. At the time of observation and test administration, Manolo had a mid-B average in Spanish, English, and Biology, but was failing Statistics and Art. Delaware State Testing Program data was not available. 

The examiner was able to observe Manolo in his Spanish II class several times. The school goes by block scheduling, with students having the same 5 classes every day in the same order, so Manolo’s class was always the first observed (first block). Manolo’s Spanish II class is an inclusion class with seventeen students. He is one of fifteen regular education students in the class. He is one of two native Spanish-speakers in the class. 

The classroom setting is devoted to Spanish topics. Mrs. S. has decorated it with maps, flags, cultural artifacts, and vocabulary words relevant to the current learning units of her four classes- College Prep Spanish II, Honors Spanish II, College Prep Spanish III, and College Prep Spanish IV/V. Each class has its own whiteboard with assignments and its own section of a Word Wall. Mrs. S. offered several different learning activities in the class that would engage them in the different aspects of both language arts and foreign language learning- reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and listening. Manolo and his classmates were frequently asked to complete in-class projects that required them to write multiple grammatically correct sentences in Spanish and illustrate them. These projects would then be presented to the class orally, where they would be graded based on pronunciation and proper grammatical structure. When introducing new vocabulary, Mrs. S. would model the pronunciation and usage of the word in a sentence using words and phrases with which the students were already familiar; they would then take turns reading a script in their text and watch a dramatization of it on a DVD featuring native speakers. At the end of the period, the students would play a review game such as charades or Piccionario (Pictionary), depending on the subject matter of the vocabulary. The examiner observed Manolo spent most of the class periods with his head down on his closed book, although he would answer Mrs. S. when spoken to directly and would actively participate in competitive games on a team with his classmates. 