The characteristics of today’s globalised and multicultural society demand communicational skills in several languages. Nowadays, fluency and agility in a language other than one’s mother tongue are necessary and fundamental. Learning a foreign language, when such learning begins at an early age, is much easier. Children respond to spoken English language as they would to their parents in Spanish, which is how they acquire listening comprehension skills. During the early years, children acquire language skills that will help them produce messages at a later stage. Therefore, the sooner we start teaching another language, the better the results will be, because children use the same resources for learning a second language as for learning their mother tongue.
In HBS EARLY EDUCATION, English learning begins without explicit and direct teaching, but in a natural way with a communicative and multi-sensory approach. The aim is to learn a second foreign language in the same way that we learn our native language, by listening to the language, by being «exposed» to it. For this reason, the activities we propose in the second cycle of Early Education (3-6 years) are aimed to help students learn to communicate in English and develop their linguistic proficiency, acquiring the language while at the same time learning contents related to other areas.
Sessions are conducted entirely in English, using Spanish only when it is absolutely necessary. Lessons are active and the teacher creates the perfect climate for children to express themselves freely, giving them the necessary tools to do so in the English language. The different learning speeds and personal characteristics of the students are always taken into account.
En There are two primary objectives for learning English inHBS EARLY EDUCATION :
- To develop a taste for the language..
- To develop fluency and comprehension skills.
To achieve these objectives we have created activities that are divided into different units of interest to the student. We follow the Work by Projects methodology, encouraging cooperative work and developing multiple intelligences. All of this enables children to learn by researching, experiencing, and living fully each of the teaching-learning processes.
These activities are classified into: “Storytellers, Drama, Click and Learn, School of Painters, and Songs for Children”
- STORYTELLERS: Stories play an important role in the literary education of children in Early Education. Our aim with these activities is for students to develop their attention and listening; to learn about other cultures through stories and to develop their imagination.
- DRAMA: Theatre is a fundamental tool in the English class. Not only to learn vocabulary and grammar in context but to learn the social conventions of the foreign culture in a fun environment.
- SCHOOL OF PAINTERS: : Our aim with these activities is for students to acquire new vocabulary, develop their imagination and creativity, boost their listening comprehension, and develop fine motor skills.
- SONGS FOR CHILDREN: Songs help language development. Through them, children learn to express themselves and acquire the phonological system of the English language.
- CLICK AND LEARN: Activities that take place in the classroom thanks to the interactive digital whiteboard.
We also believe that it is very important to provide children with the necessary tools to deal with English reading and writing in the primary education stage, therefore, we use our proprietary method based on the “Synthetic Phonics, methodology, using the songs and digital materials by “Jolly phonics”.
Music sessions are taught in English in HBS EARLY EDUCATION, developing phonological awareness activities so that our students are able to identify all the sounds that exist when we speak in English. This helps them to later associate the sounds with graphemes and to join them together to form simple words. In addition to our proprietary project, we introduce the Zoltán Kodály method, a multisensory program that teaches music through games and songs. Furthermore, we make a preliminary contact with Orff small percussion instruments through active musical listening at ages four and five.
In HBS EARLY EDUCATION we include the use of iPads. Children have the opportunity to play and learn about the use of English phonics using a variety of applications designed for this purpose. It is a different way for them to engage in classroom activities and their motivation is greatly increased as they learn through play. The applications we use for iPads and tablets are very useful, an interactive way to teach children things like colours, numbers, geometric shapes, or even English sounds to form words.
We also celebrate holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween, or St. Patrick’s Day, which not only helps us to motivate children and «have a good time in class» but also helps us to connect them with new cultural realities and to learn not only the language of those cultures, but also their way of life.
All the activities mentioned in our Project HBS EARLY EDUCATION are implemented with the support of native staff specialised in Early Education.
“If you can dream it, you can do it”
Walt Disney
