Open Discussion Forum

  • 1.  World Language with 3s, 4s and 5s

    Posted 01-07-2023 12:15 PM
    At our center, Spanish is the "world language" that we teach.  Children have Spanish twice in our 6-day rotation, 20-minutes classes for 3s and 4s and 30-minute classes for 5s. They play games, sing songs, hear stories and interact playfully in Spanish, led by a native speaker. Our goals are exposure, building a foundational vocabulary of meaningful words and phrases, and laying the groundwork for interest and future learning in world languages.

    While we can't be an immersion program, we do have an opportunity to potentially create a new model and would love to know how other early childhood are approaching world language learning. 

    What model is your center using? How would you ideally approach world language learning with this age group if you could? How can/should cultural learning be tied in?

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    Karen Watson
    Director, Cranbrook Early Childhood Center
    Cranbrook Schools
    Detroit MI
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  • 2.  RE: World Language with 3s, 4s and 5s

    Posted 01-08-2023 10:30 AM
    Many years ago when I taught kindergarten at the United Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland, we had a dual language class. Instruction in French (the language of Geneva) was not formal at that age. Critical to the children learning French was the structure for the dual language program at the UN School. My assistant teacher was to only speak in French to children and I was only to speak in English, That structure mirrors what you often see in families where parents want their children to learn the home language of one or both parents: one parent communicates with the child in the home language and the other parent communicates to the child only in English. I have seen how effective this is.

    The only wrench in this whole approach in the United States is that there are many communities where families represent multiple languages spoken at home; therefore, the effectiveness of a dual language program is somewhat diminished. The children may leave school and not hear Spanish spoken at all in the streets where they live. They may hear Chinese or Korean or Arabic or other languages represented by the families in your Center. The advantage in Geneva was that the language that the children heard in the street and in their neighborhood, although not necessarily in their homes, was French. Hearing so much spoken French spurred their learning of the language regardless of whether their family spoke French at home.

    I would suggest looking into first developing the children's conversation skills while at the same time building their vocabulary knowledge, similar to how a young child first learns English if it is the language of their home. Formal language instruction at 4 or 5, to me, is not the way to go. Look to hire assistant teachers who are fluent in Spanish if that is the language that you have chosen as the world language to go with. I really saw firsthand that this all day division between the languages spoken by the teacher and assistant teacher works effectively.

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    Nora Krieger, PhD
    Associate Professor Emerita/Past Chair NJEEPRE
    Bloomfield College/NJ Educators Exploring the Practices of Reggio Emilia
    Highland Park, NJ
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