William O. Schaefer Elementary School’s Spanish enrichment program hosted its first-ever family sing-along this morning! More than a dozen families attended the event to listen to their children perform in their new language–and, in some cases, join in.
“It was a pleasure to see our younger students showcase their Spanish-speaking skills to parents and family,” said Principal Sheila Beglin. “We hope to see more programs as the year continues and our students learn even more.”
WOS expanded its world language enrichment opportunities this year in response to strong parent interest. In all, the school is running 12 enrichment sections for Spanish, four for French and two for Italian. “Our goal is to expose students world languages through games, books and songs,” noted English as a New Language Team Lead and Spanish enrichment co-advisor Elizabeth Apicella. “We hope that students have fun and develop a sense of what it means to be a global citizen through appreciation of our similarities and differences.”
The Spanish enrichment blog is updated weekly to support families who want to learn and reinforce world language instruction at home. “Language learning is a developmental process, so we focus on basic concepts like greetings, colors, numbers and parts of the body. When possible, we connect new learning to a song, game or familiar read-aloud. We read La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) because it was such a familiar story, we could anchor new words related to food with predictable text. It didn’t take students long to join in and read along in Spanish!”
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