An increase in the Spanish-speaking population is prompting La Grange-Countryside Elementary District 105 to consider adding a bilingual 1st-grade classroom.
The district currently has bilingual classrooms for full-day pre-kindergarten, which has 40 students and full-day kindergarten, which has 18 students. The district is looking at adding a bilingual 1st-grade classroom for the 2016-2017 school year, and expects 22 1st graders who would benefit from bilingual instruction. The district’s enrollment of Spanish-speaking students has increased from 205 to 250 over the past four years.
The district has not yet decided at which school the classroom would be added. The addition of the bilingual classroom would not require physical construction of a classroom and would not require transferring or moving other students.
“Monolingual students will attend their home schools and students who qualify for the bilingual program will attend the district bilingual classrooms,” said Kathryn Heeke, director of curriculum and instruction.
District officials said the addition of the 1st grade section would be cost-neutral because it would replace a 1st-grade class. The district would need to hire a bilingual teacher.
Under the current model, bilingual pre-kindergarten bilingual students are taught 80 percent in Spanish and 20 percent in English and kindergarten students are instructed 70 percent in Spanish and 30 percent in English. The 1st-grade bilingual class would be 50 percent Spanish and 50 percent English.
Students who receive bilingual instruction advance in academic learning while preserving their native language do better academically in later years if they learn English while continuing to develop their native language, compared to students who learn English at the expense of their first language, the district reports.
While students in the bilingual 1st-grade would be Spanish speaking, Heeke said the district also receives students who have other languages than English as their first language.
“District 105 has several languages represented and English language teachers across the district provide services to these students in their home schools,” she said.
The district, which serves pre-kindergarten through 6th grade, also is looking at how it can better serve bilingual students in higher grades.
“We have an English language teacher team in place that works in collaboration with all grade level teachers to better support students across all grade levels at every school,” Heeke said.
She said English language teachers look closely at language and academic growth for all English language students and work with classroom teachers to set goals and strategies for improving learning.
Heeke said the district is also planning in in-shelter training for all teachers to better support all students. In-shelter is an approach to teaching English language learners that integrates language and content instruction. The goals of sheltered instruction are to provide access to mainstream grade-level content and to promote English language proficiency.
More Top Picks Earbud Case
The board has not yet made a final decision on the proposal to add the bilingual classroom.
Heeke said it is important for the district to look at how it can best serve students for whom English is not their native language. When younger students are provided the chance to learn in the early grades in their first language, she said they are better poised to succeed.
“Research indicates in early stages reading in the first language can profoundly accelerate the development of reading ability in the second language.,” she said. “Furthermore, students will also transfer academic skills learned in their native language to their second language.”
Twitter: triblocalam