By Andrew Fefer, Reporter/Editor
Enrollment is underway for UW-Eau Claire’s summer language immersion camps for area elementary school students.
The Bilingual Beginnings Summer Language Immersion Camps are available for students entering five-year-old kindergarten through fourth grade this fall, and provide lessons in Chinese, Spanish and French. The camps have different themes, such as ‘Nature and the Five Senses’ and ‘Out in Space.’ Children do not need to have taken previous classes in a foreign language to attend the camps.
The first of four two-week sessions begins on June 18 and the last day of the final session is Aug. 17. The schedule is at the bottom of this story.
UW-Eau Claire collaborated with its Children’s Nature Academy to set up the camps and partnered with the Eau Claire Area School District to fund them., starting five years ago. In 2013, the university was looking for new, creative ways to utilize the nature academy, which is a facility the university had acquired on Priory Road that year. The Department of Languages brought the idea to the university.
The Eau Claire Area School District will cover tuition for any student living within its boundaries, and parents pay a $10 supply fee to enroll a child in the camp. Students living outside the district can sign up, but their parents would need to pay a total of $245 for the tuition and supply fee. To reserve a spot, the supply fee has to be received within two weeks of enrollment. Parents of children who participate are responsible for transportation to and from the camps.
UW-Eau Claire students taking Chinese, Spanish and French classes teach at the camps, and many are considered pre-service teachers in those languages. A teacher certified by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction supervises their efforts.
UW-Eau Claire Spanish professor Carter Smith said the camps are a way of providing outreach to the community, an opportunity for children to learn a new language and culture and a professional development opportunity for the student teachers. He added that organizers hope it leads to the development of an immersion program during the school year in Eau Claire.
Anne Hlas, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Languages, said that research suggests when children are exposed to another language, they also show improved listening skills, flexibility in thinking and understanding of their native language.
The registration deadline for the first two sessions of Bilingual Beginnings is June 1. Parents must register their children for the last two sessions by July 1. Hlas said Thursday that many spots were available in the Chinese and French camps. Click here to fill out the enrollment form.