Dual language program part of preschool at Sheldon St. Patrick's

By RENEE WEBB
Content and Design Coordinator

Green in Spanish is verde.

Blue in Spanish is azul.

While adults may turn to products like Duolingo and Babble to learn Spanish, young learners attending preschool at St. Patrick School in Sheldon do so as part of their school day.

Jessica Schmalen, principal at St. Patrick School, said while the school has had His Little Ones Preschool for a number of years and a few years back went to an all-day option, this year they decided to offer it as a dual language program and for the first time include 3 year olds.

“The students we have this year all stay all day,” she said. “They have English in the morning and in the afternoon it’s dual language.”

The principal pointed out the school began to evaluate a dual language program last year at the suggestion of Patty Lansink, diocesan superintendent of Catholic schools.

“The fact that Sioux City already had started this was really interesting and we thought this would be one more opportunity for our families to learn something new,” said Schmalen.

The Dual Language Academy in Sioux City, which is part of Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, opened in 2019 with a preschool and kindergarten class. In subsequent years they have added additional grades and now serve students in preschool to fifth grade.

“We have a high number of bilingual students already so to bring both of those languages together we thought would be really good for them,” said the St. Patrick School principal.

Last year, St. Patrick’s began working with Boston College to get an idea of what the program would look like and what would be involved with making it happen.

“Then we were blessed to have our marketing person come on (join the staff) and she is bilingual,” said Schmalen. “We thought she could possibly be the para (paraprofessional classroom assistant) in there as well a few hours a day.”

The principal said after taking time to evaluate the possibility of offering a dual language program in the preschool, “we thought it would be a good fit.”

Lynn Shoberg is the preschool teacher and Gaby Burbano, the school’s marketing and enrollment specialist, serves as the paraprofessional in the afternoons. In previous years, students in preschool included a combination of bilingual and native English speakers. But this year, coincidentally, all preschoolers this year are native English speakers so Spanish has been new to all of them.

“It’s amazing how much they know already in this short amount of time,” said Schmalen, who noted that research not only shows that younger people learn new language skills faster but it assists in a child’s development. “They are so inquisitive and ask how to say different words in Spanish, so that helps their learning too.”

Like with most preschool programming, the preschoolers work on a variety of lessons such as numbers and colors but get the added dimension of a second language.

“The first part of the day they have their curriculum in English and then we reinforce those lessons in the afternoon in Spanish,” explained Burbano, who described this pilot year as exciting to see the young students grow in their use of a new language.

She pointed out that the afternoons usually include activities to help emphasize lessons. For instance, Skittles were recently used for students to sort and work on Spanish names of colors.

The principal mentioned the preschoolers are really catching on to Spanish words and pronunciation.

“I had one student correct me how I said yellow in Spanish,” said Schmalen because, evidently, she didn’t use the proper accent. “They are really picking it up.”

During the afternoon class time Burbano said they teach students songs in Spanish, read books to them in Spanish and utilize different approaches to help the preschools learn a new language.

Parents have commented to the educators that their children are singing in Spanish, calling colors by Spanish names and so forth.

To Burbano’s knowledge, she is not aware of any other dual language program like this offered in the area.  

“We would love to have more students involved in this because this is a great opportunity this school is providing,” said the marketing specialist.  

Looking to the future, Schmalen said St. Patrick’s is evaluating and exploring the possibility of additional dual language programming.

“We definitely want to keep it in preschool again next year,” she said.
 
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