That's what happened to many of the Spanish-speakers at Annapolis Middle School, and it's a major reason why they have trouble passing standardized tests.

But now teachers hope a new pilot course that gives those students instruction in their native language will help them do better in school. For now, it's an experiment for about 35 sixth- and seventh-graders, but if it's successful, it could be expanded to other grades and schools next year.

It could also be a way to raise Annapolis Middle School's lagging test scores. After missing state testing targets for several years - including targets for Hispanic and non-English-speaking students - the school is under pressure to raise student achievement.

If the new course "Spanish Language and Culture" is successful, it could be part of the solution.

"It goes hand in hand - building social and strong ties to their own communities by addressing their needs and continuing in their native language," said Charis Jones, who teaches the course.

"Spanish Language and Culture" has a dual purpose: to help native Spanish speakers do better in all their classes, and to give them a higher understanding of their first language.

"We want truly bilingual people, that's our goal," said the teacher, Charis Jones.

It also gives Spanish speakers their own community within the school, and lessons on their heritage, said Jennifer Hernandez, coordinator of world and classical languages and the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program in county schools.

On Wednesday, for example, Ms. Jones brought her classes to the library to do a research project on ancient Incan and Mayan cultures, which tied into Hispanic Heritage Month as well as a social studies unit the sixth-graders are studying on ancient peoples.

Using Web sites and encyclopedias in both Spanish and English, students took notes and wrote on posters they'll use next week to present their research in Spanish.

The course is meant to be interdisciplinary, Ms. Hernandez said, so the students use technology, read, write and speak all in Spanish.

Ms. Jones is hoping it will address a common problem for students who don't speak English as their first language: They speak a colloquial form of their native language at home, but never learn the more complex and academic side of it, or how to write in that language.

But in this course, students are learning to speak and read in a higher level of Spanish, just as native English speakers do when they reach the higher levels of foreign language classes in high school, she said.

New students, words

County schools are serving increasing numbers of students still learning English. There are now about 2,000 ESOL students in the county's schools. About 77 percent speak Spanish.

At Annapolis Middle School, the number of Hispanic students has risen almost 1,000 percent over the past 10 years - from eight students in 1998 to 77 in 2008.

Ms. Jones' two sections of the pilot course are full of students from El Salvador, Mexico, Guatamala and Puerto Rico who speak different Spanish dialects with different vocabularies.

She teaches them words in Spanish they wouldn't get at home, often technical terms from their other classes, such as "sequence of events" and "plot."

Students said hearing those terms explained in Spanish helps them better understand their other classes.

"They use some big words that you don't understand," said Omar Coatreras, 13, who came to Annapolis three years ago from El Salvador. "The word, if you don't know in English, the teacher will tell you in Spanish."

Diocelina Reyes, 12, said she thinks the class will help her do better on the state's standardized test. She said she found the test's math questions easy, but the vocabulary was difficult.

"Because my first language is Spanish, it's easier to understand in Spanish," she said.

Ms. Jones said the course is going well so far, but it's still a pilot and she's learning how to make it better next year. Her main goal is to make it a daily course so students get enough practice for the language to really stick; now, students take it every three days.

And she'd like to be able to teach it in smaller classes and extend the course to eighth-graders.

"There's a lot of potential," she said. "I think this is really going to help these kids."