Immersion and Multilingual Learners

At Woodcrest Spanish Immersion, students take the first steps on their path to becoming bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English by the time they graduate from high school.

Intense exposure to a foreign language at these grades (kindergarten - grade 4) provides necessary language skills for students to access curriculum in the upper grades leading to multilingual and multiliterate graduates and even opportunities to earn college credit and bilingual seals.

•  Students follow the same curriculum offered at the other Spring Lake Park Schools elementary schools except all core content is taught in Spanish. Each day, 90 percent of instruction is in Spanish and 10 percent is in English.
• Students learn to understand, speak, read, and write in Spanish, increasing fluency levels each year they are in the program.
• Students experience a wide variety of world views as they are immersed in a school culture that includes international teachers and support staff. All classroom teachers are bilingual, and some are multilingual. International teachers are all first language speakers of Spanish who offer language modeling through their multiple interactions with students during the school day and during extracurricular events outside of the school day. Support staff – paraprofessionals, office staff, cafeteria staff, and the principal – are bilingual.
• Students begin formal English instruction in grade three.
• Data from Minnesota’s comprehensive reading and math tests continue to show immersion students are performing at an equal or higher level as non-immersion students on these assessments by the 6th or 7th grade.

Families of students whose heritage language is Spanish may choose to enroll at Woodcrest Spanish Immersion Elementary School. Students may receive English Language Learner services, if they qualify, as they also experience immersion learning. Families should confer with the school to determine if this is a good fit for their student’s learning needs.  

Through personalized instruction, we work to ensure that students who enter school with a background in a language other than English, aligned with criteria from the state, are prepared for the language demands of their classes.

Learn more about English Language Learners programming.

At grade 5, students continue their immersion experience at Westwood Intermediate and Middle School and later at Spring Lake Park High School.

Learn more about K-12 Spanish Immersion programming.