Our bilingual goals and action plan for this year
We’re exhausted – Kindergarten is a lot of work! After a long wait due to the BC teacher’s strike, our daughter has finally entered the world of public education.
The goals that we set for her bilingualism were to achieve level 3 (being able to speak, read, and write) in Spanish and English and level 2 (being able to speak more or less fluently) in French.
In a few days we are having our first goal setting conference with our daughter’s teacher and it has become obvious that we will have to discuss language. Just the other day our little one confessed that sometimes she has difficulty understanding the teacher. We had never heard this from her before, and she has participated in many classes and day camps conducted in English. We are interested to hear what the teacher has to say and find a way to support her learning in an English environment.
At home we plan to continue with French (me) and Spanish (my wife) after school – although we haven’t started yet.
Home learning
The website of Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Education has uploaded their workbooks and textbooks to the publishing website Issuu – including the state-specific textbooks such as this one about Oaxaca. Unfortunately the books cannot be printed, however they are a great resource for teaching the Mexican curriculum at home.
For French we are using a workbook called Les Futés that we bought in Quebec last summer which is full of preschool-level activities that our daughter enjoys.
And of course will continue to read books, listen to music and watch videos in French and Spanish – materials that we often borrow from the Vancouver Public Library to support her learning.
