Maria Rodriguez, also an accomplished musician and singer, uses music and songs to teach her first-grade Dual Language students.
Washington State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) awarded Columbia Elementary School a two-year grant worth $60,000 this month.
The funds will be used to support the school’s dual language program as it embarks on its second year teaching interested Woodland Public Schools students English and Spanish.
Woodland Public Schools introduced the dual language program during the 2018-19 school year to help address the increasing diversity of the community’s population.
“More than 25 percent of our entering kindergarteners cannot speak English,” Columbia Elementary School Principal Ingrid Colvard said in a press release. “By offering a dual language program, we not only help address the needs of our native Spanish-speaking families but also the desires of our native English-speaking families who would like their children to be bilingual.”
The $60,000 funding will be used to fund the second and third year of the program at Columbia Elementary.
“I’m excited to have the state see the good work we’re accomplishing and continue to support our program,” Colvard said in the release. “The funding will help pay for curriculum materials for next year’s second grade students as well as professional development opportunities for our bilingual teaching team throughout this year.”
In order to continually assess and improve the dual language program, Principal Colvard and the teaching team attend professional development opportunities throughout the year, including conferences and visits to other dual language schools.
“Several school districts throughout Washington offer dual language programs so we visit them in order to research ideas and strategies to implement at our program,” Colvard said in the release. “Working with other districts helps all the schools involved improve their immersion programs by sharing the concepts that work — it’s a true collaborative effort.”
Although the program started with two kindergarten classes, Woodland Public Schools must prepare for each subsequent year as students will progress from one grade to the next.
The new grant will fund the purchasing of next year’s second grade teaching materials in advance, offering the teaching team the time to plan.
Columbia Elementary School’s dual language program now includes two kindergarten, two first grade and one second grade teacher. Families interested in enrolling their students in the dual language program do not need to be bilingual, and the students do not need to have any prior knowledge of their non-native language. All students are eligible. Applicants are accepted in the order of their application date. For additional information, visit bit.ly/Woodland-Dual-Language.
