In August 2018, we launched the first Two-Way 50/50 program in Guilford county at Hunter and Allen Jay elementary. In dual language classrooms, students achieve mastery of the curriculum in all content areas, while simultaneously developing proficiency in a second language.
In these programs, half of the students in each classroom are native speakers of English while the other half, speak the target language/s. In our case, they speak Spanish and Urdu. Students will have two teachers who deliver instruction in all content areas by following an A/B schedule. That means that students will alternate classes everyday. For the Urdu instruction, the same teacher will alternate languages instead of the students alternating teachers.
The dual language initiative has four main goals to measure students' success. Bilingualism and biliteracy refer to achieving oral, reading and writing proficiency in two languages, whereas Global Citizenship aims to develop awareness, appreciation and empathy for other cultures. The fourth goal, academic achievement, aims to increase academic performance in order to prepare students for college or a career of their choice.
Throughout the years, several research studies have highlighted the benefits of dual language programs, which include financial, cognitive and academic benefits. Results indicate that on average, dual language students outperform monolingual peers on standardized tests.
Diane August from the Center of Applied Linguistics, explains the characteristics and challenges of dual language programming in this video.