Campus Voices
Lower School
It is 8:30 on Tuesday morning in the Morse Building. As students enter their first grade classrooms, Mrs. Writer and Mrs. Stevens are just finishing their Morning Messages for Morning Meeting Time. On this day, the sentences in the messages look a bit different because they are filled with words in French or Spanish—in preparation for Señora Carrion and Madame Munir to arrive for a language lesson. During their time with the first graders, they will sing, greet each other, perhaps hear a story, or converse in simple sentences—all in either French or Spanish. And throughout the lesson, you will see smiles and hear giggles as the children explore their language abilities.
And that is how our journey to bring foreign languages to the Lower School has begun. If you visited on any other day of the week, you could see a similar scenario in Beginners and Kindergarten. You might even meet Mimi the Spanish Monkey or Cami the French Mouse—stuffed animal friends who help our youngest students remember French and Spanish words.
We are enthused with the progress we have made with our Language Program so far, and we know that there is still much work to be done. Just after Winter Break, Rebecca Geary and I met with the Morse Building and Foreign Language teachers to assess what we have accomplished so far, and plan for the future. What will be the next steps in our journey?
With much discussion, several common themes came to light:
• For the youngest children, exposure to one language is best and we believe Spanish will be our choice.
• Exposure to French and Spanish should occur at the upper elementary grades.
• This could lead to a language choice before a student leaves the Lower School.
• Designated periods should be set aside for language instruction.
So, now we have a roadmap for the next part of our journey. With a basic framework for our expansion, we can begin to think about the curriculum, scheduling, and staffing that best meet the needs of the students at our school. At spring grade-level Coffees, I will be able to fill in more pieces of our framework, bringing us closer to our destination: preparing our Lower School students at BB&N to be global citizens and world communicators.
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