Through the Skylight with Foreign Languages: Providing All Students with Challenging Elementary School Curriculum

Foreign language instruction is known to develop better critical thinking skills in children. Therefore, the teaching of foreign languages should be promoted so that "all" students may attain better creative, divergent, critical, and analytical thinking skills. Research done in past years...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inUnderstanding our gifted Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 26 - 28
Main Author Caccavale, Therese Sullivan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Open Space Communications LLC 2003
Subjects
Academically Gifted
Cooperative Learning
Curriculum Enrichment
Elementary School Curriculum
Learning Experience
Problem Solving
Research Reports
Second Language Instruction
Second Languages
Teaching Methods
Thinking Skills
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary Skills
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Summary:Foreign language instruction is known to develop better critical thinking skills in children. Therefore, the teaching of foreign languages should be promoted so that "all" students may attain better creative, divergent, critical, and analytical thinking skills. Research done in past years on cooperative learning models has consistently shown that students learn as much or more from their peers as they do from their classroom teachers. By raising the bar for all students through the teaching and learning of foreign languages, classrooms can promote higher order thinking skills for all students. Although measurable gains in English vocabulary may be greater in average to below average students, gifted and talented youngsters will also benefit from the increased awareness of overall vocabulary on the part of their grade level peers. For gifted students, learning a foreign language can provide just the right mixture of challenge and open-ended problem solving to pique their interest and provide them with avenues for independent exploration. Adding a multicultural flavor to the traditional classroom helps all students to better understand the complexities of the world around them and brings a deeper dimension to their overall learning experience.
ISSN:1040-1350