School Lets Kids Jump Right into English

Lancaster Elementary is succeeding with Spanish-speaking students by using a different philosophy than schools in East Orange

At the beginning of this school year, Lancaster Elementary School second-grader Evelin Almonte could not speak a lick of English.

Last week the Venezuela native was raising her hand in class at every opportunity to answer a teacher’s questions. She talked eloquently about the human brain. And she joined in with other students in reading from a storybook about frogs.

Schools in the east part of Orange County plan to get Hispanic students proficient in the Spanish language before easing them into English.

But Lancaster Elementary in south Orange County has moved in the opposite direction this year, exposing students to English from day one. School administrators and teachers say the approach works, at least for them.

School administrators in east county schools cite research that suggests that students who don’t master the Spanish language, grammatically and otherwise, have trouble down the road.

Lancaster is leaning on other research that shows how very young children are like sponges at absorbing a second language. Teachers there don’t want to wait until the second, third or fourth grade before moving to mostly English instruction.

Principal Joan Mahoney said her approach isn’t the only one that works. But she said students have prospered in the school’s bilingual education program.

The idea is not full immersion into English, but getting students ready for all-English instruction “as soon as possible,” Mahoney said.

It happens in phases.

Students in Heather Christenson’s bilingual transition classroom may speak little or no English. Everything in the room is labeled to enhance vocabulary. On the door is posted the word “door.” Christenson can speak Spanish, but she uses lots of gestures to get her kids acclimated to English.

“I’ll say, “Go to the door’ or ‘Go to the window,’ and then I’ll do that,” she said. “We start gradually moving to all English.”

Once students show a certain mastery of English, they move to a “sheltered English” class where the instruction is more complex, and the shift from Spanish is even stronger.

Finally, the goal is to move students to a standard all-English classroom, the third phase.

There are some early signs of success. A fourth of Lancaster’s students have moved from the first phase to the second, and from the second phase to standard classrooms.

But Mahoney and teachers know it will take more time, and more hard data, to measure the program’s success accurately. Test scores on the next round of standardized tests will be an indicator, Mahoney said, but it will take at least three years to establish a reliable track record.

So far, Evelin Almonte and her classmates are a sign that something is working.

During last week’s discussion, Christenson asked her students what kind of things the brain does.

Without skipping a beat, one student blurted out, “It helps you learn English.”



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