positive influence on student’s brain development improved flexibility in thinking, greater sensitivity to language, and a better ear for listening improved understanding of English language increased ability to learn additional languages open mind and heart to other cultures; better understanding and appreciation of people from other countries increased job opportunities in many careers

Listen to your child read to you in Spanish. Ask them to explain what they understood from the text to you. Read to your child in English. Choose both fiction and non-fiction texts and aim for at least 20 minutes of reading aloud to your child each day. Introduce English-language word games like crossword puzzles, word searches, Scrabble and Taboo. Ask your child about what they learned in school. Even if they learned it in Spanish, they can still explain it to you in English. If you know the topics that they will be tested over, ask them to explain those topics to you in English as a review. Smile whenever you hear Spanish spoken and make sincere comments to your child about how amazing it is to be bilingual. Research shows that students whose parents have positive attitudes towards the target language do better in immersion programs. Consider creatively including some Spanish in your family time. For example, listen to music in Spanish, when you watch an age-appropriate movie, change the audio to Spanish, visit a hispanic grocery store, or look for a Latino festival to attend. Trust that your child can be successful in immersion education and reach out to your child’s teacher if you need some extra support.

The focus of our Dual Language Immersion program is additive bilingualism, which means that students add a second language with no cost to their first language since languages are interdependent. Skills that students develop in the second language are available for learning and using in the first language, and vice-versa. For instance, students learn about reading left-to-right, the parts of a book, sentence structure, a paragraph, and mechanics of story and plot; all of these learnings can transfer from one language to another. The pieces of the language that do not transfer are the skills we address in English-specific skills starting in 3rd grade, along with the subject or subjects taught in English in 3rd-5th grade as reinforcement for those skills. Research shows that “the effect of learning a second language on first-language skills has been positive in all studies done…. [and] the loss of instructional time in English has never been shown to have negative effects on the achievement of the first language” (Bournot-Trites & Tellowitz, 2002). In fact, in general immersion students match and often surpass English track students’ performance by 4th or 5th Grade after first-language literacy skills are introduced (Turnbull, Hart & Lapkin, 2000).

Crown Point Christian School partners with addalingua, an organization that supports schools in their implementation of dual language programs. We do this to ensure that students are receiving not only enough Spanish, but the right Spanish, at the right time, and assessing student growth in Spanish on a set schedule. Being a partner school also means being part of a professional learning network that follows the same program design as we do. Our partnership allows us to participate in a rigorous and comprehensive professional development sequence and utilize the most up-to-date, relevant research in the field of dual language immersion education.