Foreign Language Exploration in Grade 1&K

This year we will begin offering a FLEX (Foreign Language Exploration) program for Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. Each day, students in Kindergarten and Grade 1 will participate in 20 minutes of oral foreign language instruction. Each quarter students will explore a different language. This year the four languages explored will be Russian, French, Korean, and German. We will begin the year with the students exploring the sounds and phonetics of Russian.

The FLEX component of the curriculum provides opportunities to:

-  Introduce students to language learning

- Further develop an appreciation of  the languages studied

- Motivate further language studies

- Provide students with a general overview of what other languages have to offer

- Maintain the wide audio-logical range young child have

- Enhance cultural awareness

The purpose of the FLEX program is not for students to achieve fluency in a specific language!

We know at a very young age, the human brain begins ‘sorting out sounds’. When a child is not exposed to specific sounds, the brain can lose its ability to hear and/or reproduce these sounds. This is one of the reasons why, even though we may develop the skills and knowledge needed to function in a grammatically correct manner in a foreign language, many people never lose that strong accent.  Foreign Language Exploration at a young age helps prevent this from happening, allowing students the potential to develop their foreign language to near native speaker fluency later in life.

Research has shown that foreign language study in the early elementary years improves cognitive abilities, positively influences achievement in other disciplines, and results in higher achievement test scores in reading and math. There is also evidence that language learners transfer skills from one language to another.
More information can be found at:
http://www.discoverlanguages.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=4526#improves_cognitive