Our goals at Del Mar Academy are to help our students become bilingual and bi-literate by meeting their individual language learning needs.  We realize that there are various levels of “bilingualism” but we are confident that with the support from home, time, and an interest from the child, it is possible to create a plan that will enable a child to achieve academic success in his second language equal to that of his non-native language. 

To aid our efforts, we use a dual-language (Spanish and English) immersion approach:  An approach that is constantly reviewed and evaluated by the faculty to meet the language needs of our student population.  Our dual-approach stresses literacy and content in both the Spanish and English languages from the toddler through the elementary levels. 

At the pre-primary levels, children  begin singing and vocabulary building in both the English and Spanish languages to support their oral development.   However, based on research conducted in the field of bilingual education, our teachers support the child’s literacy development (learning how to read and write) in his or her native language first.  If the child is bilingual already or  is not fluent in either Spanish or English, the teacher will meet with the parent(s) to decide what language should be used first to build the child’s literacy skills.  Although there are exceptions, we have found that transferring strong literacy skills over to another language is easier than learning basic literacy skills in both languages.

Once our children enter the Lower and Upper Elementary levels, they are immersed in a 50/50 bilingual program.  Time and subjects are divided in such a way to ensure that our students receive an equal amount of instruction in both languages.  Similar to the pre-primary levels, the teacher works with the child’s parents to create an appropriate language-learning plan based on the child’s needs.