Program Vision
The main objective of this preschool is to help each child to become independent and acquire knowledge and skills. Each child must acquire a rich oral language, organized and understandable by others. The goal is to give the child all the foundation for success in Kindergarten through full French language immersion . Children will work towards total fluency in French as well as as their overall early childhood development.
Total Language Immersion
What is a foreign language immersion program and how does it work?
In full foreign language immersion programs, the regular school curriculum is taught in the immersion language for at least half day and English isn’t used at all.
The goal of immersion is to provide educational experiences, beginning at a very young age that support academic and linguistic development in two languages and that develop students’ appreciation of their own and other cultures.
One of the key principles of immersion education is that linguistic and cultural knowledge is a resource—the more you know, the better off you are. Immersion education adds knowledge about a new language and culture while building on a child’s English language skills and knowledge of U.S. culture.
In order to make academic lessons comprehensible to learners and to support their second language learning, a vast repertoire of teaching strategies is used like body language, visuals, manipulatives, exaggerated facial expressions, and expressive intonation to communicate their meaning.
To draw students into using the language, teacher often uses songs, useful phrases, chants, and rhymes and carefully structure the day with familiar routines. At the end of the very first year students can demonstrate fluency in the immersion language.
Why should I consider enrolling my child in an immersion program?
Immersion programs are the fastest growing and most effective type of foreign language program currently available in U.S. schools. Most immersion students can be expected to reach higher levels of second language proficiency than students in other school-based language programs (Met, 1998). Becoming bilingual opens the door to communication with more people in more places, and many parents want to provide their children with skills to interact competently in an increasingly interdependent world community.
In addition to reaping the social and economic advantages of bilingualism, immersion learners benefit cognitively, exhibiting greater nonverbal problem-solving abilities and more flexible thinking (see reviews in Met, 1998). It has been suggested that the very processes learners need to use to make sense of the teacher’s meaning make them pay closer attention and think harder. These processes, in turn, appear to have a positive effect on cognitive development. However, a high level of second language proficiency is needed in order to experience the positive cognitive benefits that come with bilingualism (Cummins, 1981). From the standpoint of academic achievement, over three decades of studies consistently show that immersion students achieve as well as or better than non-immersion peers on standardized measures of verbal and mathematics skills administered in English (Cloud, Genesee, & Hamayan, 2000; Genesee, 1987).