Cary District 26 to Offer Dual-Language Program for Kindergarten Students Starting Next Year

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Cary Community Consolidated School District 26 last week approved a new dual-language program for kindergarten students, which will be rolled out during the 2016-17 school year, the Northwest Herald reports.

The school district will join several other school districts in offering the program, which is meant to teach oral and written proficiency in both English and Spanish, with benefits that range from advancing developmental and cognitive capacities to satisfying a legal requirement to provide bilingual instruction for English-language learners, according to the article.

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In its first year, a 50/50 model will be in place, which means the classroom will be made up of 50 percent native Spanish speakers and 50 percent native English speaks and will also mean there will be a English-speaking and Spanish-speaking teacher on hand, the newspaper reports. The students will be split between the teachers and spend half of their day being taught Spanish and the other half being taught English.

In coming years, the school district is hoping to roll out the dual-language program to more grades at its schools, according to the article.

Read more on the Northwest Herald.