I’m curious when your district starts a second language. (I’m a language teacher).
In the district where I live, my kids start Spanish in K. Where I teach, kids can choose Spanish, French, or Latin starting in 5th grade.
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Middle school here u less they go to an immersion school (SoCal).
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I was researching about our curriculum recently, and found that they learn sign language in K, and then Chinese in elementary school.
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They start Spanish in Kindergarten here but it’s only a once a week special. Once they hit 5th grade, they have Spanish multiple times per week and in 7th grade they have a choice of languages.
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Here in western Canada, French lessons begin in grade 4!
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I'm in the SF Bay Area and as far as I know, unless they go to an immersion school, it doesn't start until middle school and even then it is elective.
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In our local school, DD started Mandarin this year in K, but it's only 1x a week. I have seen on Class Dojo that the older kids have Spanish as well, but I'm not really sure when that starts. I should ask.
This is the only thing that I wish our school would do a better job of--I know they have a lot to fit in because they have to reach state mandated times each week for music, art, gym, recess, language arts, science, math--but I really wish they were getting the language instruction daily.
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I’m so happy that our home district offers Spanish 2 days of a 6 day cycle so young! It moves to everyday in 6th grade. 5th grade is too late to start!
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I’m a WL teacher as well (French). The district I teach in starts with the equivalent of a half year program in grade 7. I just looked up the district we live in and bummed to see it doesn’t start until grade 8
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Starts in middle school as an elective only.
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7th grade as an elective. My daughter is in an immersion program that started in first grade. It's a "school of choice" program offered in our district.
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In my school growing up (public school in CT), we had Spanish 1-2x a week 4th-6th grade, then could choose between Spanish, French, Japanese (?), or Latin in 7th & 8th. I can't remember what that schedule was like. Then, in high school, you had to earn 2 credits of a foreign language, whichever year / semester you wanted.
Here in public school AZ, it's nothing until high school. However, in many districts, most students speak Spanish & English fluently already.
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Ontario Canada has 50/50 French and English in JK and SK, then you can do early French immersion starting grade one or Middle French immersion starting grade 4. Not sure if it’s school board specific but we are very near Quebec and most everything is bilingual here.
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It doesn’t start until middle school. It makes me sad! My sister’s kids have all gone to an immersion school starting in preschool. I wish we had that option here.
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My LOs go to a French school and our preschool feeds directly into the elementary school. They start a 2nd language from year 1 of preschool, so 3 years old. My DD is in year 3 of preschool (goes on to the equivalent of kinder in September), and has been learning Thai for an hour a day for the past 1.5 years. Next year, she will switch to English 4-5 hours per week and Thai will only be one hour per week.
That said, it’s a very international school with something like 40 different nationalities and I would guess that most kids are it least bilingual already if not multilingual. Every family I know with kids there has multilingual children and my own LOs started school already trilingual.
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7th grade, 2 years required for graduation public schools in NY mostly adhere to this. I am a high school Spanish teacher and it's so frustrating to see language started in our public schools when the research-proven "critical window" of language is literally closing. I think language study should be started in 2nd grade or so, when their brains are more open to it and insecurities about spoken language are at a minimum.
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Our neighborhood school is an IB school, so foreign language starts in K. This is the norm for all IB schools.
My first grader is currently in mandarin.
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16 comments