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ELDON, IOWA -- Students at Cardinal High School in Eldon got to try their hand at teaching on Wednesday.

Several Spanish students from the high school made a trip to the elementary school to give the kids there a lesson in Spanish.

Groups of two or three prepared a lesson plan based on a video, which was shown in English. They then took vocabulary words from the video and taught them to the children in Spanish.

"We're trying to get them to learn that there's so much diversity and we need to be aware of that," Cardinal senior Nicole Bedford said. "We need to take part in it and realize that it's a good thing and get them to be aware of everything around them."

In addition to promoting diversity awareness, the program takes advantage of childrens' ability to absorb languages. Students are likely to learn more and retain more of a foreign language if they learn it while they're young.

The program also helps Cardinal's high schol students, who get to gain experience teaching in a classroom.

"I just wanted the high school students to be aware of the elementary students and what they're doing here, because I know some of them want to be teachers," Spanish teacher Leah Hallgren said. "At Cardinal, we're really trying to promote the students being out there more, being advocates of education and also to understand how to teach something, you really learn it better. Plus, they get to see the elementary students absorb that material and they learn language so fast."

As of now, there are no plans to make the Spanish program a permenant fixture at the elementary school, but Hallgren says that the idea has been tossed around. If budget and timing works out, she hopes to be able to teach Spanish at both Cardinal schools.