TRUE BILINGUALISM
ROBIGS uses the immersion process to learn the target language. As in the ROKIDS child day care center, the children at ROBIGS experience bilingualism as a „language bath“. On the one hand, English is the native language or educational language for many pupils, on the other the language provides access to international schools and facilitates social contacts abroad. This results in two groups of pupils: native language German - target language English and native/educational language English - target language German.
This is facilitated during the lessons with „team teaching“, whereby a German teacher and a „native speaker“ are present in the class family, in accordance with the principle „one person - one language“. The respective native language is taught monolingual. We document the lingual identities and learning progress of the children according to the conceptual design of the „European portfolio in languages“.
ACQUISTION OF WRITTEN GERMAN LANGUAGE
The acquisition of the written German language for German native speakers occurs with the textbook „Einsterns Schwester“ (Einstern’s Sister). The children individually go through the letter houses in six different
themed books. Initially, the children use block letters and subsequently learn basic fonts individually coordinated. This writing is derived from block letters, is easy to learn and based on the international script.
ACQUISTION OF WRITTEN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Children with English as their native language initially learn English with the „Oxford Program“, a comprehensive English program for the acquisition of the written English language. Alphabetizing with pictogram tables allows the early written language acquisition in the target language, thus preventing the solidifcation of the phonetic writing of words in the target language according to the model of the mother tongue.