Nursery

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

We believe that the constant strengthening of the physical and mental capacity of our students is vital in HBS EARLY EDUCATION, as an essential complement to our Educational Project.

In HBS EARLY EDUCATION, students enjoy:

• A weekly session of psychomotor skills. Taught by the school’s Physical Ed. teachers. This session takes place at the multi-purpose classroom and at the sports centre.
• There is also a weekly swimming pool session included in the group’s timetable.

Our aim in HBS EARLY EDUCATION is to contribute to the complete development and maximum physical, mental and social well-being of our students. For this reason, we offer our families a full-time nursing service at the centre throughout the school day, headed by a registered nurse.

The functions of this nursing service are the following:

• To respond to emergencies or incidents that arise during school hours.
• To administer the treatments and medications prescribed by medical professionals to school children who require them, with prior written authorisation.
• To control and monitor students with chronic illnesses in collaboration with families and other members of the school team.
• To refer the student to the healthcare centre when deemed necessary with prior notice to the student’s parents or guardians.

The HBS Psycho-pedagogical and Counselling Department constantly supports the work of the centre and the teaching staff as a whole to ensure that the necessary balance between them is achieved.

It collaborates in all those actions aimed to ensure a comprehensive education of students and the adaptation of teaching processes to the characteristics and needs of all our students.

This department is made up of the following professionals who support the work of the teaching staff in Early Ed.:

• Two school psychologists specialising in Early Ed.
• A Hearing and Language Specialist.
• A Therapeutic Pedagogy specialist.

In HBS EARLY EDUCATION the C.D. mainly performs the following functions:

• Intervention and Orientation for families
• Prevention and detection of difficulties
• Preventive actions and with other institutions.

One of our goals as an educational centre is to give coherence to our educational practice from an environmental point of view. Throughout all the stages, but especially in the Primary Ed. stage, our goal is the correct implementation of environmental education in the curriculum, as well as the carrying out of different activities that promote the awareness of the whole community.

To carry out this project, our centre participates in the SUSTAINABLE SCHOOLS PROGRAM by the CAM (Autonomous Community of Madrid), specifically the project ‘ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION ON WASTE AND RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION.’

Our environmental project focuses on three aspects: RECYCLING, WASTE, AND CONSUMPTION, through the following activities.

• Reuse of paper before throwing it away.
• Waste sorting: paper, plastics and cardboards and the rest of waste, each one being thrown into its own container or waste bin.
• Team of environmental agents to monitor and remind colleagues that no waste is thrown out of bins and containers (Early, Primary and Secondary Education).
• Teams of students who check the playground after recess and collect waste that remain in the area.
• Team of students that supervise the actions of the environmental project and are involved in creating new objectives.
• Environmental education team in charge of designing posters and campaigns to motivate and remind students, teachers and school staff about the actions of the environmental project.
• With the intention of making students aware of the benefit that their work brings to the environment, we keep a waste register (number of bags approximately (or weight) collected per day, per week, per month…). The positive impact that the initiative has on the environment is analysed with this data through the creation of graphs, diagrams, etc., which are developed in the different subjects (iPad, mathematics, natural science, etc.).

More information EverGreen Humanitas