What Does English Look Like in Preschool and Pre-K?

By: Eleanor Bannon

What does English look like in a French immersion program? Right now the Pre-K students are working on a unit called change.. In this seven week unit they will be learning about change in animals,  people, environments, and the weather. Pre-K students will develop a good understanding of what the change is like and what it will look like throughout the rest of their lives. They will be learning about change through tasks like sorting different examples into categories. The teachers use materials like flashcards and photos for the young students to understand what they are saying even if there is a slight language barrier. For these Pre-K students, they are working on English for around an hour a day. These kids hopefully enjoy these tasks that are given to them and they are excited to explore these challenges. 

What are the preschoolers up to? The preschoolers are up to a new unit called jobs. In this unit they meet people with interesting jobs. For example they met an architect named Zaha Hadid.And then they were given the task to create their own buildings. They used their creativity to create their own buildings out of paper strips and glue. The preschoolers have similar tactics for teaching. They are taught with similar things like flashcards. They also work on sorting things into categories.The preschoolers have 2 hours of English a week. In both grades they all have interconnecting units with French so they can keep learning in both languages. 

An interesting thing that was brought up in the interview that was done for this article was that the unit that goes on throughout the whole year and is for both classes is called community. And this was very interesting because  there was a true repetivity with the community Learning. Even in 8th grade there are still the community projects, in fifth grade there are the exhibition projects which are based on community issues. This highlights how FI is really run on community and the units they work on working together and the 8th graders have Community Days at the middle school and this pattern was very interesting to see. The school really does have a true mindset when it comes to its learning and  it seems that the conclusion to this is that 8th grader are always learning a hint of community no matter what even if it's just working in a group it is still a community project or a group that you are working together and it's a community. 

In conclusion, English  in preschool and Pre-K are more surrounding topics that they will use later in life. And they are doing creative and attentive projects for the kids to follow and it is very interesting to look into that and compare it with what the 8th graders are doing. 

This article and photos are part of the eighth-grade communications class's media intern project, where students worked on a project for the French International Communications department.