Holliston Public Schools
French Immersion Kindergarten Program
I. History: Holliston’s French Immersion Program was begun in the fall of 1979 with one Kindergarten class of 27 students, representing approximately 10% of the overall Kindergarten student population. With the addition of one new class per year, the program expanded until the entire K-12 sequence had been completed. The first entering French Immersion Kindergarten class graduated from Holliston High School in June of 1992. Since its inception, the program has grown to include two entering Kindergarten classes per year, comprising approximately 20% of the entire elementary school population. Currently, the classes K-12 have double sections of French Immersion The total system-wide French Immersion population now stands at 575students. Total Immersion (100% daily classroom instruction in the target language) is offered in Kindergarten through Grade 2. Partial Immersion (50% daily classroom instruction) is offered in Grades 3-5. Daily French Immersion instruction (one 38-minute class per day in the target language, integrated with some content areas) is offered in Grades 6-8. At the high school level of the program, there is a specific program of studies for French Immersion students, culminating in the Advanced Placement French Language Course in their senior year.
II. Concepts-Goals: The ultimate goal of Holliston’s French Immersion Program in the Elementary Schools is to deliver the Holliston Elementary School Curriculum through the medium of the French language. All subjects taught in regular English classrooms are taught in French at respective grade levels of the Immersion Program, with the exception of English reading and language arts, which are not introduced to French Immersion students until Grade 3 of the elementary continuum. French literacy skills are taught to students beginning with readiness in Kindergarten (vocabulary and phonemic awareness, including sound/symbol relationship). In Grades 1-2, students are given all daily reading instruction in French. In grades 3, 4 and 5, reading is taught in both languages during separate halves of the school day. The “French-only” rule in the classroom is adhered to from the first day of Kindergarten on the part of the teaching staff, with students allowed to converse in English during this vital first year. At the Grade 1 level, students segue into the “French-only” rule for all spoken French, on the part of teachers and students, by late fall. In this way, students are allowed a “silent period” during which time they acquire listening comprehension skills, and are led into the productive language phase as it is developmentally appropriate to do so. The Immersion method of teaching is often called the “Mother Method,” as it is the same method used by mothers speaking to and “bathing” children in their own native language.
One of the underlying theories of the Immersion concept in education is the theory of “transfer” from one language to the other in the areas of literacy concepts and skill development, for things such as phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, comprehension, context clues, textual analysis, and all other literacy skills and concepts which are non-language-specific. Students who learn to decode the written word in French in Grades 1 and 2 do not have to be retaught how decoding works when they begin English instruction in Grade 3. They do, however, have to become familiar with all aspects of the English phonetic system, and, after mastering English-specific phonetic elements, are able to easily decode English words. In other words, once they haveunderstood, through the medium of the French language, what “decoding” is, theyare quite able to transfer this skill to the English language.
In addition to the coverage of the Holliston Elementary School Curriculum in each subject area, French Immersion students are expected to acquire an acceptable level of oral functional fluency in French. Although this goal is, in itself, a normal by-product of the Immersion experience, it is considered to be an important goal of our program. Developing and perfecting the French language proficiency (grammar, syntax) of our students is the real focus of the Middle and High School follow-up program. At theelementary level, students acquire a facility with aural/oral French, and it is later on that formal grammatical instruction begins.
A third goal of Holliston’s Elementary French Language Immersion Program has been the development, to a lesser degree, of written language skills which are specific to the French language (eg. French grammar, French spelling, French syntax, verb tenses and conjugations, etc.). Again, true proficiency in these areas is targeted in Middle and High School follow-up programs.
All transferable, or non-language-specific skills in written language would of course be developed through the implementation of the Holliston Elementary Schools Curriculum, in French. These transferable skills would include sentence formation, letter-writing, story development, story mapping, creative writing and poetry skills, book reports and written demonstrations of textual comprehension, and all other skills referred to in the Holliston Elementary Language Arts Curriculum which are not specific to English.
In addition to the above stated goals, students enrolled in the French Immersion Program are exposed to different aspects of Francophone Cultures. Students in Grade 1 study Carnaval in Quebec , students in Grade 2 study the country of France and so on. Themes related to specific French-speaking countries may be woven throughout the curriculum.
III. Research: According to research conducted by Drs. Wallace Lambert and Fred Genesee of McGill University in Montreal, Canada , one can define several advantages associated withearly language immersion programs. . These advantages include:
1. A greater measure of cognitive
flexibility and creative/divergent
thinking skills. Students who learn a second
language beginning at the elementary level develop patterns of thinking that
allow them to be more open to new concepts and different
ways of thinking about
familiar concepts, thereby allowing them to develop higher order thinking skills
(see Bloom’s Taxonomy).
2. Development of more intense listening skills.
3. Transfer skills in many curriculum areas. Mathematical problem-solving abilities and phonological awareness which leads to better reading ability are especially enhanced by learning a second language at an early age. (Students who study a foreign language beginning in the elementary school demonstrate higher achievement in verbal and mathematical sections of the SAT test than do students who do not have this second language experience.)
4. Development of fluency in a foreign language in a natural setting, with fluency being the by-product of an elementary school education.
5. Development of a greater degree of cross-cultural tolerance throughthe understanding that the diverse peoples of the world speak diverse languages, and that learning a foreign language can bring us into touch with the world around us in a very personal way.
(N.B. Since Holliston’s elementary Spanish program, Gr. 1-8, is taught using only the target language for instruction, in a total immersion methodology, students in our traditional foreign language program may experience some of these same benefits, but to a lesser degree.)
IV. Individual Student/Program Evaluation: Using Stanford and MCAS scores in English testing as well as standardized tests of French listening comprehension and reading, students will be evaluated as consistent with district-wide student evaluation and/or individual program needs. In some cases, such as Stanford Testing in Grade 3, French Immersion students tested at a later point in time than the general population, to allow them the time to transfer skills to English before being formally tested in English. Individual informal student assessments such as developmental reading inventories are administered in French Immersion as well as in English program settings. All standards-based grade-level assessments in Math and Language Arts are administered in French to French Immersion students in Grades K-2, and in English beginning in Grade 3.