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Originally Posted by velochic
Lovemyboo - what kind of bilingual program is your ds in? We have dd in an immersion school... from day one it is 100% in the language track. Is your similar? If so, I'd like to exchange thoughts about school.
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This is not an immersion track. Necessity was the mother of this program. At least 50% of the kids in our school are native spanish speaking. Many of them start school with no working english at all. They have to take all those tests in english and, understandably, do very poorly. Their scores were hurting the school and many of the spanish speaking kids were having a really tough time. Because the Hispanic population is so high you can't count on english immersion. The kids had plenty of others to speak Spanish to. So the school came up with the bilingual program.
This is an optional program that your child can start in the kindergarten or first grade and it goes to the fourth grade (where our elementary ends and middle school begins). Half the class is native english speaking and half is native spanish speaking. The teacher must be fully bilingual (in fact most of the staff at this school is bilingual to some extent).
In kindergarten the teacher often taught in both languages simultaneously. She'd say something in english and promptly repeat it in spanish. As the kids progress classes will alternate being taught in english and in spanish. For one class period a day the spanish speaking kids go to their ESL class and the english speaking kids go to SSL. All their specials are taught in english as the "bilingual" part applies only to their main classroom.
I think the program is wonderful and addresses the school's multi-cultural issues very well. The english speaking kids are encouraged to help the spanish speaking kids with their english, and vice-versa. No one is punished or discouraged from speaking spanish. The parents are more involved in their child's education b/c they can speak to the teachers and be understood with no problems. The kids understand each other a lot better and are more likely to remain friends (sad to say but the racial divide definitely exists here). By the end of the fourth grade the kids are fluent in english and spanish. I wish the program continued on b/c many kids come from Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, and other spanish speaking countries when they are older than 6 or 7 and there's no program for them, then.
Anyway, probably more than you asked for. :LOL I love that ds is learning spanish and constantly corrects my pronunciation.
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