Afterschooling with an Immersion language program

[ReadingMama1214]

We are hoping to get Dd into an immersion Spanish school for Kindergarten in 2017. It's a full immersion program with 100% of academic classes taught in Spanish. Music/art/PE are taught in English. They use Singapore for math which is great. They don't teach reading/writing in English until 3rd grade when it drops to an 80/20 Spanish/English model.

 

Dd is half way through OPGTR and I believe we will finish it this spring or early summer. She writes well (form is good, size varies) and is starting to phonetically spell some words.

 

What would you afterschool for a kid in an immersion language school? We will continue read alouds in English. I plan to have her read to me in English daily and provide books in both languages (library has an abundance of Spanish reading material). I was thinking of adding a spelling program. I know I could use OPG, but I would prefer something seperate and probably not AAS since I'd prefer something more cost effective.

 

She has brainpop, science kits, and learning toys. I mainly don't want her to lose the English language art skills she's already gained.

[RenaInTexas]

My son was in a very similar situation. They did send hw home in English and we only speak English, so his English skills were maintained. He is now in 2nd grade. I think you have a good plan. I would encourage a phonics bases spelling program because I feel that was the biggest 'cost' of him being in a 90% immersion program; his phonics blending and more advanced phonics is not where I would expect it. He did continue reading in English, however, you can memorize how to say a lot of words, but if you don't know (or recognize) the rule that helps you pronounce the word, then you don't transfer that knowledge to other similar words. This is what I see with him. He reads fine, but doesn't have the phonics rules to read difficult words that he hasn't seen before.

 

Another thing he does that will be a work in progress is mixing the two languages (speaking and writing in Spanglish). For example, if he learned something at school that he hadn't encountered at home, he couldn't find the English word to explain it. That was rare. More often, he mixes the two languages when writing; especially on words that are similar like animales (=animals). I think this is something he will just have to 'outgrow'. But, I do correct him whenever he does it. I just can't figure out why he keeps writing green as verde....those two are nothing alike!

 

I would also do some writing (structure); as Spanish and English sentence structure does differ. Just to be sure she knows (reinforce) where we put certain words in English sentences; like, we write our adjectives before the noun they modify.

[Have kids -- will travel]

My son attends school in English but takes classes in his second language. His reading in English transferred seamlessly into reading in his second language. Vocabulary is a limited factor; decoding and phonics ability is similar in both languages (second language is more phonetic). 

 

We support the second language with copious read-alouds and weekend reading. Reading during the school week is in English. We don't insist on writing in the second language, as his English writing is still very much developing. We also didn't ask him to read in his second language until his English reading was very advanced (early chapter book stage), and then he basically went from saying that he couldn't read to reading at a similar level.

 

Another factor is that when working on Spanish, your child will find it easiest if you support by speaking Spanish. During English work, stick with English. I'll occasionally explain a difficult word with translation, but in general, it's better to keep the languages separate. I speak both languages with my boys, but when we're doing English, it's just English. Same with the second language.