K-12 schools

Dennis Township School District

One Spanish teacher, 55 minutes a week per class, and a way to keep students practising the rest of the time.

Empowering students to learn beyond the classroom

Carlos Covarrubias, 'Mr. C' to his students, teaches every Spanish class in Dennis Township, across two schools and eight grade levels, on one 55-minute period per class per week. What he has found is a way to keep students on track anyway, and to get them confident enough to speak in front of each other.

Dennis Township students at work in a school computer lab, beside the district's Hawks emblem

The challenge

Limited classroom time and varying academic levels

Carlos Covarrubias is the only Spanish teacher for both Dennis Township schools, and he sees each group of students for one 55-minute period a week. First through eighth graders cycle through the same door, at every level of ability. “If I had more time with them, we could cover more, we could accomplish more. I can only do so much in 55 minutes.”

Most of his in-class work asks students to practice out loud. Many were reluctant to do that within earshot of their friends: shy about speaking, hesitant about their beginner pronunciation.

What they did

A week that keeps going after the bell

Mango's teaching tools were what decided it: automatically graded exercises, group engagement statistics, and per-student progress tracking. The flexible structure adapts to each student's pace and lets them revisit material already taught, for a second run at mastering it.

The mobile app extended the week. Mr. C could hold students accountable for take-home work, and shared access to lesson logins, progress and chapter test scores kept both of them informed about where the trouble spots were. “Students have the opportunity to practice all week long using Mango. It's an advantage — a total advantage. I've even had kids on vacation using Mango.”

A Mango Spanish lesson showing 'How do you call yourself?' beside '¿Cómo se llama usted?'

In their words

What they told us

Carlos CovarrubiasK-8 Spanish Teacher, Dennis Township School District

What changed

Confident students communicating effectively

When the district integrated Mango for the 2017–2018 school year, students took to the interface and its learning features: Phonetic Pop-Ups, which replay words and phrases recorded at a slower pace, and Semantic Color Mapping, which lets them see the grammatical structure of what they are reading.

The part he talks about is the speaking. After listening to real dialogue and practising with Voice Comparison, students began holding short conversations outside his classroom, finding him during lunch duty or in the hallway and starting in Spanish straight away. “The more students used Mango, the less shy they were to speak.”

By the numbers

average monthly increase in learning time: 100%; across the 2017–2018 school year
average monthly increase in learning sessions: 17×; across the 2017–2018 school year

What followed

Integrating digital learning results into students' GPA

Mango started as an extra-credit supplement. After the first year, Mr. C moved to fold students' Mango work into their overall grade point average, partly to drive conversational skill, partly to make accountable use of the program count for something.

“I keep refreshing that in their minds — you need to be able to communicate. It opens so many more opportunities in the future to have that second language.”

About Dennis Township School District

Dennis Township School District serves over 600 pre-K through eighth-grade students across its primary and elementary schools in New Jersey. Carlos Covarrubias, 'Mr. C' to his students, is the district's only Spanish teacher for both buildings, seeing each group for a single 55-minute period per week.

A Mango customer since 2017, using Mango Classroom.

Download the full Dennis Township School District story (PDF)