The School District of Lancaster’s English-Spanish immersion kindergarten class is running at a healthy pace, according to Kim Marucci, district coordinator for social studies and world languages. The district’s 25-student pilot program, now in its first year, may even be supplemented with more advanced reading materials to keep up with the students’ progress.

Similar programs have already been implemented throughout the United States and have proven that young children can rapidly gain fluency and confidence in a foreign language in less than 3 years. An article from the Center for Applied Linguistics states that “over three decades of studies consistently show that immersion students achieve as well as or better than non-immersion peers on standardized measures of verbal and mathematics skills administered in English.”

The class is hosted at Wharton Elementary, although the group of students was selected via lottery from throughout the district. Roughly half of the children come from English-speaking homes while the other half come from Spanish-speaking homes. 70% of instruction is presented in Spanish and the remaining 30% (math and specials) is presented in English.

As the program progresses to the fifth grade, the ratio of instruction will gradually flip. Through the process it is expected that interaction between students will help reinforce a strong grasp of both languages—verbally and in writing—by completion.

Only halfway through this school year, Marucci said, the entire class is conversant in the language, efficiently responding to all of the teacher’s daily instructions. The teacher recently told Marucci that, for the first time in class, a student wrote a complete sentence in Spanish. In her visits to the classroom, Marucci observed students chatting with one on another and even reading in Spanish. At the playground, she said, one can hear students panning between both languages at their leisure.

English-speaking parents have mentioned that at home their children will often sing in Spanish and occasionally drop phrases in that primary language of the classroom.

Currently, Marucci said, she is “investigating” additional reading and social studies material to supplement the existing curriculum. Thus far, however, the students have been exposed to the same essential curriculum as in any other kindergarten classroom. “We’re happy with the way things are going,” Marucci said, noting that when the program was first planned, “I don’t know if we knew what to expect. But we’re pleased with the outcome.”

Next year the students enrolled in the dual language kindergarten class will proceed to first grade in the same format. A new kindergarten class will then be added, as well. Marucci said that a long-term goal is to expand this program into more elementary schools within the district, although it may never reach all thirteen.