English classes are organized every day. Apart from regular, everyday classes children have the contact with English during educational games and normal everyday situations (free play in the classroom or on the playground, eating).

 

The classes are organized according to the monthly plan. The topics and the length of classes are adjusted to children’s age and abilities. English teachers and Native speakers are responsible for the monthly plans.

 

English and bilingual education is organized in two thematic units named English classes. During these classes teachers follow both, English and bilingual education programs, including math, science and art education.

 

The program is based on the idea that by introducing children to English in the preschool, children are prepared to learn the foreign language in the future, which is compulsory at the 1st  educational level (grades from 1 to 3).

Teaching English at the Preschool level stimulates verbal intelligence and familiarizes children with a foreign language. That helps them to move smoothly from preschool to school education, and achieve successes in English education in the future.

 

The aims of our English Education are:

• To awaken child’s interests in English by providing opportunities to listen to the melody of the language

• To develop basic communication skills

• To create situations that help to improve memory

• To motivate to learn English by providing the sense of success, acceptance and safety

• To support creativity in language learnin

• To familiarize with group work during games and play

• To develop the attitude of acceptance and tolerance towards different cultures

• To help children develop socially, teach friendship and tolerance while playing with other children.

 

The topics that are taught are familiar to children and are closely connected with their environment (animals, seasons of the year, colors, body parts, clothes, food, counting, family, emotions, Holidays). That choice of topics guarantees the psychological comfort during classes and helps to develop positive attitudes towards English.

 

In our Preschool learning and teaching English is based on play. Kids take part in music, movement, arts and crafts play and games, that guarantees: the safety zone (kids can relate to what they already know), the right to silence (children listen to the language and decide whether they want to take an active part in the classes or not), the right to make a mistake (teachers praise the efforts).

 

In our work we use various methods of work - blended learning. That helps us to address the multiple intelligences of our students.

 

The methods used in our preschool:

• Total Physical Response – based of motoric reactions of children  and answers the child’s need of movement. One of the principles of TPR is to give children enough time to listen to the foreign language without speaking.

• Total Immersion – total reduction of mother tongue or reducing it to the minimum. Thanks to that, students are ‘immersed’ into the foreign language and do not feel the necessity to translate everything to their L1. We hope that immersion will prevent communicative problems of our students in the future and encourage them to use the language in creative way and handle difficult situations.

• Audiolingual method – based on listening and repetition or imitation. Thanks to audiolingual method children gain communicative skills very quickly. 

• Communicative method – one of the main principles of this method is to create authentic situations that will encourage children to use the language, such as roleplay (in the restaurant).