World Language Program K-5

​Whittier International’s Language Philosophy

Language is a creative, interactive system we use to express ourselves, construct meaning and access information. Through language and communication with others, we develop our identities.  Because language is essential to learning, it is central to all of our instructional programs.  Consequently, all of our students are language learners and all of our teachers are language instructors.  Since language is a part of personal and cultural identity, we encourage and celebrate students’ home languages.  Learning multiple languages is important because it promotes an international perspective, open-mindedness, abstract thinking, and cross-cultural communication.

World Language Instruction:

English is Whittier’s language of instruction, and Spanish is our World Language.  As an IB school we are expected to offer a world language to our students ages 7-11.  Whittier offers a weekly, 30 minute Spanish class in 1st through 5th grade.  Our goal for the world language program is to provide Spanish language enrichment, it is not a bilingual program. In the language program we teach the basics of Spanish and we develop skills for language learning in general (such as recognizing cognates, figuring out a word's meaning based on context, etc.).   You can see what we are working on in class on our blog https://whittierespanol.blogspot.com/.