Maria Montessori, the Italian physician and educator who created the revolutionary teaching-learning method that bears her name, observed that children have a special sensitivity that allows them to absorb everything around them.
This unconscious power, unique to childhood, is vital for their adaptation and growth.
Montessori teaches us that if children can’t “act according to the guidelines of their sensitive period, the opportunity for a natural achievement can be missed and lost forever.”
This understanding makes perfect sense within our view of education and sheds light on the importance of early and sensitive English language learning.
Learning a second language during early childhood, at the same time as the mother tongue, enhances various aspects of the child’s development: linguistic, neuropsychological, cognitive and sociocultural. Therefore, the age at which you acquire the experience of a language is key to optimizing these benefits.
At be.Living, this learning process has to be meaningful right from the start. In Early Childhood Education, when students immerse themselves in English, and in Elementary School, when they study the language in greater depth, we seek to create enjoyable, memorable and challenging opportunities for children to broaden their horizons and open doors to new knowledge.
With bilingual education, we are preparing children to experience the globalized and borderless world in which we live, where English is essential.
Together with the Organization of Bilingual Schools of São Paulo (OEBi), we have spent a lot of time reflecting on bilingual education — reflections that have led us to the conclusion that this is the best approach for today’s world.
At our school, communication takes place in English, through meaningful everyday experiences that not only teach the language, but also build a meaningful relationship with the language.
We create situations where children experience the social function of language, both oral and written, integrating language into their relationships, expressions, logical and scientific thinking, and artistic activities.
These practices allow children to develop comparable language skills in English and Portuguese.
Through bilingualism, we organize the children’s natural curiosity, promoting the construction of knowledge through investigation, research, questioning and debate, providing the development of a critical, autonomous and multicultural view of the world.
In this way, we honor each child’s sensitive period, giving them the opportunity to gain the wisdom that naturally belongs to them.
