Beyond The Bell: Bilingual Pre-K Classes Offered At OKC School

This school year marks the first time the Oklahoma City School District is offering full-day pre-school.

And not only that, it's also the first time preschoolers are being exposed to a bi-lingual education.

In a Van Buren Elementary pre-school class, learning takes place in two languages.

It's the first year Oklahoma City Public schools is offering the Dual Language Program

“We have some students, you know, they have both languages spoken at home and we thought it would be best and would feel more comfortable with learning that language and also to make them both bilingual and bicultural by the time they approach third grade,” said Principal Amparo Macias.

The lessons alternate with one day in English, and the next in Spanish.

Already, the young minds are catching on.

“At the beginning of the year, some of them only spoke English or Spanish and now I have some of them that are perfectly bilingual,” said teacher Juan Luis Roman.

Pre-K teacher Juan Luis Roman is from Spain, like his co-worker, Ms. Garcia, who is also from Europe.

Her class is learning in English.

It's also the very first year the district offers full-day Pre-K, something teachers are used to since teaching all-day pre-school in Spain.

“I was surprised on the first day at the beginning of the school year because I thought they are only three and four, maybe it's a problem for them too many hours. But no, it's not a problem. They stay here perfect,” Roman said.

With the district increasing the hours that the little ones are in class, teachers said there's more time for activities that pre-schoolers going half a day don't normally do, such as P.E., art, going to the library and using technology.