Herricks to expand language immersion program

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Herricks to expand language immersion program

With a nearly 59-percent minority school enrollment, the Herricks school board announced Thursday the expansion of the district’s language immersion program.

The goal, said Francesco Fratto, Herricks director of world languages, is to prepare the Herricks students with world readiness standards of literacy in communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, arming students with the ability to think and persuade in a different language.

During a presentation to the board, Fratto showed videos of Herricks elementary students learning math skills in Chinese, and cross-classroom collaboration, exemplified the district’s push on technology usage through Google Classrooms. 

“Seventh grade students are asking and debating immigration [policy] in Italian via Google Hangouts,” Fratto said, “Students were respectful [to students in Italy], and it was a very positive thing.”

He said what students do with language is most critical, and must go beyond vocabulary and verb conjugation.

Fratto said students need to dominate the English language, but must acquire another language, and that New York State will soon be adopting the national world language standard.

“A ‘Seal of Bi-literacy’ will be granted to recognize students who are bilingual,” Fratto said, “This includes if a student speaks at a high level of Hindi, Chinese or Gujarati.”

School officials said after a successful five-year evaluation at the elementary school level, the program will expand to the middle school and high school.

“One of our goals this year was to begin the process of systematically looking at our curriculum, and doing curriculum review on a five-year cycle,” Fratto said.

Fratto said in his presentation that Herricks World Language enrollment is “healthy,” at the high school level, with 58 percent of middle school, and 38 percent of high school students currently taking a language.

He said he hopes high school enrollment increases, mirroring districts such as Garden City, Jericho, Syosset, and Roslyn.

“Upper levels you see more activities, but see more mistakes,” Fratto said, as students language usage becomes more conceptual in high grades.

Forty participants from 12 language courses stated in a survey the various reasons for participating in a world language. Responses included being able to communicate with non-English speaking parents and grandparents, the desire to speak fluently in another language, and following peers who were taking on a language during middle school and high school.

One student said he felt he had progressed when at times he finds himself “thinking in French.”

In other business, Herricks High School students took home eight out of the 15 History Day awards, the most ever awarded at the state-sponsored competition to any one high school district, school officials said.

“It was a tremendous day for our students,” school Superintendent Fino Celano said.

Herricks Middle School students received first, second and fourth place in their year-long project results, and will be sending student projects to represent New York at the national competition to be held at The University of Maryland in June.

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