We start out with teaching the children simple words with one syllable, the emphasis is onmaking them familiar with the Dutch sounds of the letters. They will learn the vowels and consonants and will be taught the rules in Dutch on how to form certain words. We will introduce words with sounds and combinations of letters that are not existing in the American language (e.g ui, au, sch).Emphasis will be on spelling. Later the children will learn how to "build" a sentence (what kind of words do we need?) and the beginning of grammar.
We use methods from the regular school curriculum used in the Netherlands. The children are tested every week to measure the improvement of their spelling and understanding of the Dutch language.
The children need to speak Dutch during Dutch School: in order to encourage them to speak Dutch they share their weekend-stories with each other. They also have to read Dutch out loud.
There are writing assignments which they have to present in class.(eg. Describe their room at home, bring their favorite book to school and share the content, etc.)
An amount of time is spent on talking about the History and Culture of the Netherlands. During the month of May we talk about World War 2 and the day the Dutch were liberated (May 5, 1945). Every month a different subject is covered: e.g. during Prinsjes Dag in september, we talk about the government in the Netherlands, and we make our own Troonrede.
We also play typical Dutch games with each other with educational value, e.g. Scrabble, Ganzenbord.
Because of the special situation the children are in we have to adapt the existing educational materials. This keeps us awake and alert.
With the different levels of language skills it is a difficult to teach the whole group at once. Fortunately, Juf Marjolein makes sure that everybody is sufficiently challenged and, most importantly, has fun!
