The International and Indigenous Languages Program (elementary) provides students the opportunity to develop their first language skills and allows heritage languages to flourish. It is a non-credit program that is open to all elementary school-age children (JK-8) regardless of their cultural or ethnic background. The program provides the opportunity for students to deepen their cultural awareness, foster pride in their heritage and strengthens their self-esteem. In addition to building languages skills, research demonstrates that students who study languages in addition to English and French perform better in other school subjects. This program runs in various sites across the Halton region and includes a school year session (September – June, Friday 6:00pm-8:30pm, or Saturday 9:30am-12:00pm) and a summer program (July, Monday to Friday 9:30am-12:00 pm) . Participation in the program is free to all students, but families are asked to pay a small classroom materials fee ($25) for each registered child at the time of enrollment. Languages offered during the school year session include* – Albanian, American Sign Language, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Dutch, Farsi, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.
* All classes are conditional on sufficient enrollment. Students may apply to enroll in this program at any time during the school year. For further information, call 905-632-2944 x148, or email:
[email protected].
