International Schools

We wanted to send our son to one but the cost was prohibitive (something like $10K a year, IIRC). There are two in the Denver area, Colorado Int'l School and Denver Int'l School... both of them have web sites.

We found a public school that has a dual-immersion Spanish program (we're in Jeffco and I think this is their only official one). DPS has a few and your district might as well. I'll double-check to see if I have anything on Aurora from when I was researching this.

As to our dual-immersion program, my son has only completed 1/2 a year of preschool so far. The preschool isn't immersion but rather "Spanish enrichment." And he's definitely learned a little bit. Not much yet, but a little. This particular school's goal is for all students to be bilingual and biliterate by the end of 6th grade. The program is getting lots of kudos from around the district, from what I hear, so definitely check out your local district.

Best of luck!

Not yet, but my almost 4 year old will be enrolling in a Spanish Immersion Preschool class where one teacher speaks exclusively Spanish, and the other exclusively English. They've become quite popular, and I have heard good things about this one in particular. I figure it can't hurt. DS #2 picks up on everything, plus he had a Spanish speaking nanny as a toddler and remembers a bit from her.

My son is going into a dual immersion Spanish/English program this year (1st grade). Two teachers, one spanish only the other English only, and they each teach 1/2 of the day. The classes will be mixed native English and native Spanish speakers (they'll be learning from each other too!) an mixed abilities (not just the "advanced" kids). I'm excited to see how he does in it.

I taught Kidergarten for 3 years, and a lot of the kids were English Language Learners (they spoke something else aat home). It was basically a full immersion, and I remember how quickly they learned English. It will be about the same for kids in dual-immersion classes. Children this age are still wired for learning languages (they're still learning all the nuances of their own!) and so it's a great time to be teaching another language.

One thing to consider ... most programs have early sign up. If you want your oldest in it for Kindergarten, start looking into it midway through the school year before she enters Kindergarten so you have time to make a decision and get the applications/registration stuff filled out.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to enroll my children in a language immersion school because there are none near me right now! But I have lived in other places (i.e. Minneapolis/St. Paul area) where there have been fantastic language immersion programs. The parents I talked with who had children in these programs couldn't say enough good about them. They were awesome.

Then I researched it extensively myself. I found out that students may not be performing academically as well as their peers in non-language immersion programs, but only in the early grades. By fourth or fifth grade, they had already caught up academically and were well on their way to becoming fluent in a second language. So I highly recommend it.

I speak two languages fluently and I can't value it enough! It is great!