Spanish and TV Production students collaborate on bilingual broadcast
In a creative collaboration between Ms. Luciano's Spanish 4H class and Mr. Dollin's TV Production students, Oyster Bay High School's Bay News Now studio became the setting for a bilingual broadcast project that brought together language learning and media production in a way that neither class could have executed alone.
The project was the culmination of a four-week Spanish news unit in Ms. Luciano’s class. Over the course of the unit, students studied the structure and conventions of broadcast journalism in Spanish. For their final project, each student selected a news topic of their choosing, from international affairs to sports and wrote an original script. Some reported on real current events; others crafted fictional stories of their own invention. After drafting, revising with peers and incorporating teacher feedback, students submitted polished final scripts, which were then passed on to the TV Production students to load into a teleprompter.
The TV Production class, which runs Bay News Now, walked the Spanish students through everything involved in a real studio broadcast. Production students took on the full range of professional roles: floor manager, sound, lighting, director and teleprompter operator. They also served as on-set coaches, sharing tips for appearing on camera and guiding their classmates on which camera to look at and when.
Each Spanish student also created an over-the-shoulder graphic to accompany their story, which gave the segments an authentic, professional news feel.
The result was something neither class could have produced alone: a bilingual newscast that reflected the hard work of two very different classes coming together with a shared goal.
