Four Key Elements for Academic and Social Skills-Building
The problem of “learning loss” and limited social skills has taken on a new dimension during the pandemic. With less human interaction due to Covid fears, quarantine, and continued masking, concerns about atrophying academic and social skills are intensifying. How can we bolster our children’s skills and expand them in this context?
It is indeed possible to infuse strong academic and social skills-building into a progressive, exploratory school or camp setting. It’s important to choose a preschool or summer program that combines rich and interesting content with language development. This adds an extra layer of interaction that feels like fascinating conversations to a child, rather than rote academic learning.
Admission Open French Preschool Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
Four key elements are critical to a successful immersion preschool program: Rich linguistic input, multisensory activities, relationship building, and frequent contextual repetition of language.
Rich linguistic input is essential to building fluency (in a target language as well as in English and math). Teachers should model the key structures, vocabulary, and content in their own narration and conversation so that children absorb and then begin to produce it on their own. Through discussion and natural repetition, the child commits concepts to long-term memory because the activities do not rely on rote memorization.
A program must provide activities for children to practice and build skills using more than one kind of sensory input, thus enabling them to commit key concepts and skills to long-term memory.
Critical to successful engagement is relationship building and connection. Conversation-based teaching contributes greatly to the rapport between teacher and child as well as among teacher, child, and peers.
Cognitive research addressing short- and long-term memory shows that short, frequent repetition of information in context is more effective than longer sessions for long-term retention.
As an immersion preschool, Explorer Studio’s methods are highly successful at improving children’s language fluency and social skills through hands-on science and art activities accompanied by vivid narration and robust conversation. Rooted in cognitive research on language development and retention, this popular program ensures challenging and fun skills and language building at all levels, from beginning learners to children coming from bilingual families.
With an adult, a “find the differences” activity can be used with a beginning language learner (simple vocabulary for objects, colors and shapes, same/different, here/there) as well as an advanced speaker (adverbs of place, nuanced vocabulary like pebbles and bark, and compare/contrast language).
In addition to hands-on multidisciplinary projects, Explorer Studio immersion preschool uses activities like finding the differences and “picture talk” which are designed to spark conversation and build spoken fluency of a target language at all levels, beginner to bilingual.
Explorer Studio is an excellent choice for families who want research-based early childhood education in a warm and nurturing setting. No other French preschool in NYC focuses on exploratory-based, sensory-rich learning in a science- and art-filled environment, while fully immersing children in a target language.
Explorer Studio language immersion preschool employs an anti-bias approach to education as well as to admissions, and endeavors to maintain an equitable and inclusive community. Please contact Explorer Studio for more details about admissions and how to join our community.