TEACHING DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN ESCOLA LA SALUT DE SABADELL

L’Escola la Salut is located in Sabadell midtown, in Gran Via. Sixty one teachers work in it and seven hundred and ninety students, of middle class, come everyday. Students from 3 years old, when they start in the pre-primary courses, to 18 years, when they have finished the high school.

We work English all these levels and not only in the English subject.

In the KINDERGARTEN, we work 1 hour and 45 minutes of English distributed in two sessions. We use the OXFORD SPLASH books and resources ( cds, ICT, books and four puppets: a turtle, a duck, a ladybug and a frog). Some activities that we do:

-          Routines: hello song, goodbye song weather song and days of the week song (only in P5).

-          Review the vocabulary worked with flash cards .

-          Play some game with the vocabulary: it can be a traditional game like memory or computer games.

-          Listen a story or watch a video of the unit worked.

-          Sing a song with the vocabulary.

-          Work with the book.

-          Conversation with a native person once a week. The children of P3 only say words, P4 say words and some expressions like  “It’s sunny today”, and P5 works words and expressions as “What’s the matter? I’ve got a runny nose”.

                        

Besides English itself, they also learn music with the L3 as vehicular tongue one hour a week. We work, with the help of some puppets,  the songs, the quality of the sound in this language, but the dances are in Catalan because they have to listen and learn some traditional songs of our country.

With the stuff that we work in the L3,  I introduce all the concepts in a very significant way to them:

- Every music lesson starts with the song, that I wrote, of one of the puppets that we use.

- T o work HIGH or LOW they associated the concepts with two animals.

- With the songs, we first see the video of the song and then I explain to them the verses of the song with pictures. Then they have to repeat each verse with me.

A the beginning of the course I write a song with the names of every class.

This is the song of  "The cats".

Also, they have one session of story time of the stories that they are working in Catalan and Spanish too.

In PRIMARY, besides the 2 hours of English established in the curriculum, the students of primary work the L3 :

. CICLE INICIAL: oral expression, 1 hour.

. CICLE MITJÀ: science, day to day English, 1 hour of each.

 .CICLE SUPERIOR: science, 1 hour.

They also use English as a vehicular language in arts and crafts.

In SECONDARY also they also work hard in their L3 learning process; they participate in THE BIG CHALLENGE contest to motivate students, the students elaborate a short sketch for JOCS FLORALS.

They are being prepared for Cambridge KET, PET and FCE.

They speak an hour per week with a native speaking assistant.

The students use English as a vehicular language in other subjects:

1st ESO: some units of maths.

2nd ESO: Treball de síntesi.

3rd ESO: Treball de síntesi and English clips in collaboration with CIUTAT i ESCOLA.

4th ESO: Anglo-German literature.

They can choose the German language as an optative language during the four years of ESO.

In BATXILLERAT, the students have to be able to express themselves in English, as well as writing as speaking; they also have to know and apply grammar rules.

One hour a week, they speak with the native speaking assistant. Finally, the best students can do official tests from Cambridge or EOI (B1 or B2).

As you can see, the school gives an important role to the English language it works. The children leave the school with a good level of this third language they started to learn at the age of three.

As an English teacher in the kindergarten for 4 years, I can tell you that maybe the children haven’t got the skills of their mates of primary, but it’s easy for them to learn a language if you teach it  in a significant way.

They are listening this language for almost 4 hours every week and since the second term of P3 until the last of P5 they can follow the classes. They are trilingual in some way, due to they understand 3 languages, they speak 2 with fluency and they can say some simple expressions with the L3.

In my opinion, our target with the L3, is to make them see that it’s useful to speak it and use it. Let’s start!