The Giles School is a private French immersion school located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school (formerly called The Markham School for Human Development) was founded in 1989 by Harry Giles, CM, QC - a pioneer in bilingual French immersion in Canada and the founder of the Toronto French School.
The Giles School offers classes for students from Pre-Kindergarten (daycare, age 2) to Grade 8. It is independent, non-profit, non-denominational, non-gender, and co-educational.
The school began at The Donway Covenant United Church near Don Mills and Lawrence with a small number of students. After one year the school moved to another site and then moved again in 1991. In 1994, with increased enrollment, it opened a second branch to house older students.
In 2008 The Giles School relocated to 80 Scarsdale Road in the York Mills and Leslie area of Toronto. This location provided a single building for all the school's students and offered room to expand.
The Giles School follows an open admissions policy where all admissions are on a first come, first served basis. Students are accepted at age 2 through Grade 1 without pre-testing or screening and with no previous French experience. The school believes firmly that with well-crafted and properly executed approaches to learning, achievements of exceptional academic power and emotional versatility are possible for all children.
The student population is limited to 170 with class sizes ranging from 10 to 16. Student to staff ratios are 8:1.
The school was founded on an educational philosophy developed by Giles. It is based on six pillars: early enriched learning, languages (bilingualism and Mandarin), small classes sizes, highest national standards and love.
French is the core language for all subjects at the Pre-Kindergarten level. Starting at age 2.5, The Giles School French immersion programme teaches children letters, numbers and French vocabulary using interactive games, books and pictures.
In mathematics, the goal is to have students counting aloud to 60 by the end of the year. Students are taught to recognize and write numbers up to 20.
Starting in Grade 1, students are introduced their third language, mandarin. From Grades 2 to 3 children receive 45 minutes of English instruction everyday and from grades 4-6 children receive English for 1:30 a day; most core subjects are studied in French throughout the primary grades.
French immersion is part of the curriculum until the end of Grade 6, at which point students have the option to continue. From Grades 4 to 6, French and English instruction share equal time. Students have the opportunity to learn for over 2 hours a week Mandarin.
In bilingual education, students are taught in two languages. It is distinct from learning a second language as a subject because both languages are used for instruction in different content areas like math, science, and history. The time spent in each language depends on the model. For example, some models focus on providing education in both languages throughout a student's entire education while others gradually transition to education in only one language. The ultimate goal of bilingual education is fluency and literacy in both languages.
Education in Canada is for the most part provided publicly, and is funded and overseen by provincial, territorial and local governments. Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province. Education in Canada is generally divided into primary education, followed by secondary education and post-secondary. Within the provinces under the ministry of education, there are district school boards administering the educational programs.
PS 184M Shuang Wen School, a public school in New York City also known as PS 184, is a Dual Language elementary and middle school located in Manhattan's Chinatown. The school teaches students from Pre-Kindergarten to 8th grade. It is a part of the New York City Department of Education and located in Manhattan District 1 which also includes the Lower East Side and East Village. A major $1.7 million renovation of the school playground and soccer field was completed in 2019 by the Trust for Public Land and DEP. In the elementary school, the school teaches in Traditional Chinese and utilizes the zhuyin phonetic system popular in Taiwan. During the typical school day, one day is taught in English and other day is in Mandarin. As a Dual Language school, classes in both languages are a mandatory part of the curriculum.
Language immersion, or simply immersion, is a technique used in bilingual language education in which two languages are used for instruction in a variety of topics, including math, science, or social studies. The languages used for instruction are referred to as the L1 and the L2 for each student, with L1 being the student's native language and L2 being the second language to be acquired through immersion programs and techniques. There are different types of language immersion that depend on the age of the students, the classtime spent in L2, the subjects that are taught, and the level of participation by the speakers of L1.
A medium of instruction is a language used in teaching. It may or may not be the official language of the country or territory. If the first language of students is different from the official language, it may be used as the medium of instruction for part or all of schooling. Bilingual education or multilingual education may involve the use of more than one language of instruction. UNESCO considers that "providing education in a child's mother tongue is indeed a critical issue". In post secondary, university and special educational program settings, content may often be taught in a language that is not spoken in the students' homes. This is referred to as content based learning or content and language integrated learning (CLIL). In situations where the medium of instruction of academic disciplines is English in countries where the first language is not English, the phenomenon is referred to as English medium instruction or EMI.
Transitional bilingual education is an approach to bilingual education where the children first acquires fluency in their native language before acquiring fluency in the second language, where fluency is defined as linguistic fluency as well as literacy. This is in contrast to total immersion bilingual education where the children are directly immersed in the second language. Transitional bilingual education is among those most commonly implemented in public schools across the United States. The application of transitional bilingual education in the United States ultimately resulted from an effort to officially recognize Chicano and Latino identities with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act.
Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School is a public secondary school located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Churchill Secondary is one of two International Baccalaureate schools and one of three French Immersion secondary schools in Vancouver. It is named after the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill. Churchill has the largest student body population in district 39 with about 2000 students in the campus.
School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) or SD43 is one of the sixty school districts in British Columbia. The district is the third-largest in British Columbia with 45 elementary schools, 14 middle schools, and 11 secondary schools. School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) serves the Tri-Cities, including the cities of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, and the villages of Anmore and Belcarra. The school district covers an area of 120 square kilometres and serves a total combined population of 210,390 residents. It has over 4,000 full-time and part-time employees. It has one of the highest graduation rates in the province, with 91.9% of students graduating in the 2013/14 school year.
French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which students who do not speak French as a first language will receive instruction in French. In most French-immersion schools, students will learn to speak French and learn most subjects such as history, music, geography, math, art, physical education and science in French.
Edmonton Public Schools is the largest public school division in Edmonton, the second largest in Alberta, and the sixth largest in Canada. The division offers a variety of alternative and special needs programs, and many are offered in multiple locations to improve accessibility for students. As a public school division, Edmonton Public Schools accepts all students who meet age and residency requirements set out in provincial legislation.
The Toronto French School (TFS), founded in 1962, is an independent, bilingual, co-educational, non-denominational school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Charles III, as King of Canada, is the royal patron of the school. The school rebranded in 2011 to become TFS – Canada's International School.
International School of Boston is a bilingual co-educational TPS-12 private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dual language is a form of education in which students are taught literacy and content in two languages. Most dual language programs in the United States teach in English and Spanish, but programs increasingly use a partner language other than Spanish, such as Arabic, Chinese, French, Hawaiian, Japanese, or Korean. Dual language programs use the partner language for at least half of the instructional day in the elementary years.
Four-Forest Bilingual International School is a private day school located in Lucerne and Zug, Switzerland. Founded in 2007, it has around 280 pupils, whose ages range from 2 to 16.
William Henry Giles was a Canadian educator who was regarded as a pioneer in early academic intervention and French immersion. He was the founder of two French immersion private schools, the Toronto French School and The Giles School.
Cupertino Language Immersion Program (CLIP) is an alternative K-8 education program located at John Muir Elementary School (K-5) and Joaquin Miller Middle School (6-8) in the Cupertino Union School District (CUSD). CLIP is the oldest public Mandarin Immersion program in California and the second oldest in the country.
Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association (ECBEA) is a non-profit educational organization working to promote the learning of the Chinese language alongside the regular school curriculum through a bilingual education program in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The program is unique in North America as it exists alongside the regular school curriculum and offers a complete continuum of studies from Kindergarten all the way to High School graduation. The society works in close association with the Edmonton Public Schools.
Big Apple Academy is a coeducational independent school for students in pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. The Academy occupies two modern facilities located in the Gravesend area of Brooklyn, New York City.
Mandarin Immersion Magnet School (MIMS), formerly Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School (MCLIMS), is a magnet school in Houston, Texas, United States. It was established in 2012 and is part of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The school's current campus in the St. George Place area of Houston opened in August 2016; it was previously located in the former Maud Gordon Elementary School in Bellaire, Texas.
The following is a list of bilingual education by country or region.
Canadian Who's Who (2003), ed. Lumley, Elizabeth, University of Toronto Press.
Habib, Marlene (2008-09-22). “The little French-immersion school that could…and did” [ permanent dead link ], [The Globe and Mail]. Accessed online January 16, 2009.
Coordinates: 43°45′01.1″N79°21′20.6″W / 43.750306°N 79.355722°W