Historical Review

Bilingual Program

The program started in 2008 training teachers in methodologies to teach Content areas in L2 and in English language. In 2010, with the assistance of the National University of Colombia started the implementation of the Content Based Additive Bilingual Program at DAP which consists on teaching content areas such as Science or Math through a second language. Besides, this approach allows that students can learn in a meaningful way and increases the time students are immersed in L2. On the other hand, in 2011 the bilingual focal group was created in order to begin the syllabus construction for English, Science and Math for Elementary school. At the same time, the school started the implementation of the bilingual program in the classroom, teaching Science and Math to first graders. The following years teaching these subjects no only to primary, but middle and high school through the last 12 years in a progressive process.

In the same way, other subjects such as Technology and Physical Education have been included. Currently, the program has reached eleventh graders, and 50% of our curriculum is in L2. Therefore, students are immersed in 16 hours a week of English instruction in the classroom. In addition, from 10 subjects, five of them are taught in the second language: English, Science, Math, Technology and Physical Education. As a result of this process, about 70 teachers from both shifts and more than 3000 students from preschool to eleventh grade have been involved in the bilingual process. in 2015, due to the different needs and challenges of the program, , the role of a Bilingual Leader was created, since that time Gisell Mora Mejía has been the Bilingual leader of the school, and in 2019, as the program reached more groups and more challeneges, Juan Andrés Ducuara became the Bilingual leader in the afternoon shift. In terms of training, teachers have received trainings on several topics such as Cognitive Challenge, Differentiation, CLIL, Assessment for Learning, Communication skills among others. In 2018, we became a British Council Affiliated School due to accomplishments of our goals and the quality of our Bilingual Team.