Manzanita Bilingual School
Where childhood is a joyful endeavor...
Dual Language Immersion
What is a Dual Immersion Language Program?
Our Dual English/Spanish immersion program provides native English and Spanish speaking students the opportunity to become bilingual, bi-literate, and bi-cultural. The dual immersion program is designed to serve speakers of both languages within the same classroom. Students are intentionally mixed in the same educational environment to provide communication and academic language development in an interactive setting. Program participation begins in Preschool where monolingual students begin learning basic vocabulary through the Practical Life area of the Montessori classroom. Students receive lessons specially designed to introduce new vocabulary, while introducing new concepts. As the students' language progresses students extend their new language learning into the Sensory area of the Montessori environment. Language arts instruction is specially designed to focus heavily on the ways in which Spanish and English are similar in the initial stages of language learning and gradually proceed to the areas where the languages are different.
How does Manzanita foster language learning?
The instructional approaches for Dual Language Immersion Programs follow sound principles underlying bilingual and foreign language teaching methods. Learning is provided in an environment that allows students to engage in an meaningful environment and interact with one another. The needs of each language group includes: primary language development, second language acquisition development of cognitive language and literacy skills, and the development of a positive self-image and cross-cultural understanding. The curriculum in the program utilizes communication-based instruction, balanced literacy strategies and interactive participation.
Why doesn't Manzanita provide mathematics instruction in Spanish?
Manzanita Bilingual School recognizes that the purpose of mathematics instruction is to provide students with ample opportunity to practice the language of mathematics. It is not our goal that students translate the mathematical learning that they are doing into another language. Instead, it is our belief that the symbols of mathematics are best used to describe mathematical thinking. It can be thought of as determining what language (Spanish or English) should the instruction of French occur in. As such, we teach the vocabulary of mathematics that is used for describing everyday phenomenon, such as shape and quantity, in both Spanish and English. All mathematics instruction to develop mathematics cognition is provided in English. This is due to the fact that the overwhelming percentage of upper division mathematics instructors are monolingual speakers of English. As such, it does not serve our students well to have to learn to describe their mathematical thinking in a language that they will not use for advanced level mathematics.
