Students for whom English is not their first language are supported at different levels in order to participate in all aspects of school life. All homeroom teachers are experienced in teaching students with English as an additional language, and most of the student’s day is spent integrated into the classroom activities.
Students relatively new to an academic English environment may be taught in a mixture of pull out and in-class settings, during explicit language instruction time. The initial support is focused on building basic communication skills and vocabulary in English while helping them to become familiar with our school culture and expectations.
Our goal for EAL support is to parallel the skills and content of the regular classes, but in modified language that is suited to the individual student’s needs. This will encourage integration into main stream language classes as soon as possible.
Most EAL students become proficient users of English conversational language within the first year at our school. Language learning is a process and in order to succeed in school, all students need to develop their academic language, which can take up to 7 years to acquire. At KIS we continue to provide language support to this end from both language and classroom teachers.
We advise parents to continue to use and develop their children’s mother tongue as we recognize that children build a second language on the skills and concepts they have acquired through their first language.
