Language immersion

At De La Fontaine trilingual Montessori School, learn in three languages. Throughout the week, three teachers, one French speaker, one Spanish speaker and an English speaker stand with the child during his activities.

Trilingual immersion provides a wonderful opportunity for children to learn a second/third language in a natural environment before the developmental window for language acquisition closes.

Increasingly, research indicates that learning a second/third language has innumerable benefits for a child’s brain development. It increases creativity, enhances verbal and mathematical problem solving skills, and develops an advantage in grasping and formulating concepts. These skills contribute profoundly to a child’s self-esteem and sense of value.

Best of all, the exposure to foreign languages provides the building blocks to greater understanding of other cultures and communities. It prepares a child for life in the multi-cultural, multilingual world of the 21st century.

Personal benefits
Learning another language, whether Spanish or French, today allows your child to further enjoy his tomorrow. Being able to speak another language enables your child to more easily and more joyously travel the world and to interact with Spanish or French speaking people in our communities and families.

Long-term, knowing a second language can free up a student’s time to pursue other activities in his later schooling: high school language requirements will be met with ease and college admissions look favorably on students who can speak more than one language.

As an adult, knowing a second/third language of course can open up additional job opportunities.

Cognitive benefits
Recent research indicates that being multilingual may actually make people more creative and more flexible thinkers and excel at critical thinking and problem solving. When presented with a problem, they are able to look for more than one solution.

The mental stretch students receive in an immersion classroom helps develop their executive function (cognitive control), allowing them to have better focus, juggle multiple tasks, and adapt to changing conditions.

The skills gained through an immersion education make students more appealing to prospective employers when entering the workforce.

Academic benefits
An immersion program is the best way to learn a new language as it allows for students to achieve high speaking and literacy skills.

Because students have different language levels immersion classrooms use differentiated instruction and flexible groupings allowing students to learn at their own pace and without limits.

Students with an immersion education score high on standardized tests, scoring as well as or better than their non-immersion peers, even in English.

Classrooms are not just language immersion but cultural immersion as well, giving them a greater appreciation for different traditions and perspectives.

• Starting early. The younger your child is when he is introduced to a foreign language, the faster, more naturally he will learn. We strongly encourage parents to enroll in our Young Toddler program as soon your child turns 1 year old. So as your child will become fully trilingual much more easily than older children.
• Full immersion. Many schools offer Spanish, French as an occasional, 2-3 times per week, or one hour a day activity. While this is better than nothing, it will not enable a child to actually speak a second/third language as a preschooler. In most Montessori preschool programs, if another language is introduced, it happens in a dual-teacher, dual-language environment: one teacher speaks English (lead teacher), and another teacher speaks the second language (assistant). This approach is better than the occasional class, but it usually fails in getting children to speak the second/third language: English is already the dominant cultural language, and if the lead teacher speaks English, it becomes the de facto classroom language. Children may learn to understand what the assistant teacher says, but they will rarely use the other language actively.

In contrast, at De La Fontaine trilingual Montessori school, we offer a full immersion program. Children learn in three languages. Each classroom provide a full day immersion. Throughout the week, your child works with 3 teachers, an English native speaker, a French native speaker and a Spanish native speaker. The teachers speak only their native language, and children are encouraged, over time, to speak to teachers and peers only in those languages.

For children to want to speak a language they need to feel confident about it. The more they know of the language AND the culture it represents, the more at ease they will be at using the language in their everyday lives. By introducing the children to the culture of the language parents can positively support their children in finding their own unique multicultural identity.

At De La Fontaine Trilingual Montessori school, we promote cultural exchange via events with our families and with professional partners. By sharing and connecting, we create a dialogue of cultural acceptance. There is a level of respect and understanding contributing to our education for Peace that stems from a cultural exchange.