Proposal

I am planning to volunteer at Creative Care Child Care in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. While I am volunteering there, I will be working with children whom are five and younger. With these children I will teach them a lesson, particular one in Spanish in order to support my idea of the importance of early child hood education specifically learning a second’s language. From my project I won't truly get to see the long-term results considering it will take years to see how effective my teaching was on the children at a young age. But, for short-term results I will get to see how the children benefited from my teaching in the quality of their skills over the period that I am there. My goal is to see how the children learn effectively and watch them row as individuals. I plan to spend an hour the night before I am teaching, doing some planning in which I will create activities for the lesson that I am going to teach the children. Within my lessons I will try and make the learning fun and enjoyable for the children by doing coloring activities, etc. I will not try and teach them something from a textbook when I know it is not something they will understand. I am going to research the best ways to help children at a young age be able to learn and comprehend such vigorous material. For my project I will have to find an outside source, or create my own learning activities. For example, dot-to dot, puzzles, games etc. I will spend my time the night before my volunteering planning these lessons and activities for about an hour. Then, twice a week I will be volunteering at the day care center to see how effective my teaching is on the children and evaluate it over time. I am going to be researching the benefits of learning a second language at a young age and how it can affect one in the future. I will also be researching how one at a young age learns a second language in a more psychological manner to see how the process works. My essential question will specifically be, “ What are the benefits of learning a second language as a young child?” I do actually have some prior experience with this topic because I am highly interested in learning a second language, specifically Spanish so I try to teach my younger brother Spanish all of the time. My little brother whom is six, really enjoys learning Spanish and does pretty well in doing so. I believe my research will benefit me on broadening my understanding of how children learn in general. It will be helpful for me to learn how to create a fun learning environment for children and teach them in a way in which they can learn to their best ability. As my research process has began I have come across a few different sources in which I feel can really help me in my research. For example, the first article I found, “Americans Breaking Out of Their English-Only Shells,” explains the importance and popularity of American people in general learning a second language. This article will help me to see the long term-benefits of children learning a second language. The second article I came across in my research that I will be utilizing was, “Starting Young: The Case for Investment in America's Kids." This article helps me to better understand the reasoning behind the importance of teaching children a second language at a younger age, as well as the best ways. Lastly, another article I am going to refer to in my research is, “Assessing Language Development in Bilingual Preschool Children,” in which discusses important topics such as stages of development, assessment process, background information, and curriculum development.