What a gift to be bilingual! With the incredibly diverse student body we have at Provo Primary, a fair number of students do speak other languages fluently (French, Creole, Spanish, Hebrew, Croatian, etc.) and academic studies back up what we know to be true…foreign languages are most easily learned at a young age. Over the past several years, Provo Primary has enriched and expanded it’s foreign language curriculum, moving beyond Spanish classes in Key Stages 1 and 2, to offer true Spanish Immersion to the school’s younger students.
Miss Tracy’s Year 1 classroom is a lively place any morning of the week…
it just so happens that on two of those days, the conversations and learning take place purely in Spanish. Under the guidance of Spanish Immersion teacher Mrs Yorka, the students have quickly progressed from a wariness of “strange” words they didn’t understand to a confidence in their ability to interpret and recall a wide range of Spanish vocabulary learned through hands-activities, such as mask making for “Dia De Muertos”.
After learning about this traditional Mexican holiday through a short movie and discussion, the students got to work making “calaveras”. Led by Yorka, who gave directives in Spanish, the children were encouraged to use lots of color and detail as they cut, glued and decorated, sometimes stopping to ask ¿Está bien? As she explained, putting the words and the holiday into the context of this project made it much easier and enjoyable for the children to absorb what was being taught – far more than rote memorization or translation. Fabuloso!
