Early Start on a Second Language : Education: South County youngsters in pilot program learn and develop fluency in both English and Spanish.

At Valencia Elementary School, kindergarten teacher Socorro Aclaro and her aide do not speak English--at least not in front of their students. The no-English rule is even spelled out in a flyer tacked to the classroom door for parents and other visitors.

Aclaro teaches in a pilot program in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District called Two-Way Language Immersion, in which students learn all their subjects in Spanish. They not only read Dr. Seuss and absorb the ABCs and 1-2-3s, but also learn about health, science, social studies and reading--all in Spanish.

According to the program guidelines, youngsters begin immersion in kindergarten and continue learning in Spanish until they reach sixth grade. Spanish-speakers maintain a strong foundation in their native language while they learn English during specific lessons on oral language development, which increase in duration with each grade.

“It may be confusing for adults, but it isn’t for the kids,” Aclaro said. “I thought a lot of the children would be crying and sobbing their first few days here. But they didn’t. Now, they are really beginning to understand both languages very well. They’ll have no problem at all being fluent in both languages.”

The goal of Two-Way Language Immersion Education is to allow students to interact and learn each other’s native language--English-speaking youngsters absorb Spanish and vice versa. By the end of first grade, school officials say, the youngsters develop fluency in both languages by acting as peer tutors for classmates who may need help in either language. And what they learn in one language helps them gain footing in the other.

“The kids really help each other. We’ve seen the Spanish-speaking kids teach their classmates when they have trouble, and vice versa. They are pushing each other along,” said Dolores Toyama, a bilingual resource teacher in the Saddleback Valley district.

The expanding immersion program is presently housed at Valencia Elementary but will move to De Portola Elementary in the fall because it needs more space. The district has scheduled an information meeting night on May 7 for parents interested in registering their children in the program.

Marsha Youde enrolled her 6-year-old daughter Whitney at Valencia when she heard about the program.

“We have a world economy, and we have to be able to communicate with each other,” Youde said. “I think she will be incredibly prepared for the future with this kind of program.”

After six months in immersion, Whitney is talking to the family’s Spanish-speaking housekeeper and using proper tenses, her mother said.

Immersion relies on parents to make sure their children succeed in learning both languages, Aclaro said. Parents are encouraged to read stories to their children and make sure they retain their primary language while learning another.

During a recent visit to the classroom, English-speaking 5-year-olds quietly read Spanish textbooks while the Spanish-speaking youngsters conversed in English with their classmates.

When one English-speaking youngster asked Aclaro what to do with her valentines, the teacher answered, “ Ve y pon tus Valentines en la bolsa de plastico. “ Without hesitation, the youngster skipped to a box of plastic bags. She took one bag out and carefully placed her cards inside it.

Students who participate in the program are monitored to see whether immersion works for them. A youngster who lags behind in either language is given extra tutoring rather than being transferred to a regular class, Toyama said.

Toyama’s son, Alexander, 6, is in the class. Toyama, who is Puerto Rican, and her husband used to speak Spanish when they did not want their children to understand what they were saying. Last October, they were talking about what to buy Alexander for his birthday. They decided they were going to get him libros. Alexander--with only one month of Spanish lessons under his belt--understood he was getting books.

“We can’t use that system any more,” Toyama said. Now the Toyamas resort to spelling out words.

The immersion program is the only one of its kind in Orange County, said San Jose State University professor Kathryn Lindholm, who has studied similar programs throughout the state.

Schools in San Diego and San Francisco that have language immersion programs have shown that students have amazing success with such programs and are able to achieve fluency in both languages without sacrificing other subjects, Lindholm said.

“There are clear advantages in this program,” Lindholm said. “The children are not only bilingual, they are biliterate. They have a greater appreciation of cross-cultures and they are integrated with diverse students. They also have a positive attitude toward other language groups.”

Lindholm said Spanish-speaking students in immersion programs tend to learn English faster and with more comprehension. In standardized tests, they perform better than other Spanish-speaking students in regular classes.

Some parents initially think the program has disadvantages, but most eventually come to believe that it is necessary in an increasingly diverse society, Lindholm said.

“Sometimes you get parents who are not informed about the population of the schools. They hold stereotypes about what students can do. Part of the job is to dispel the stereotypes” such as low expectations of the effectiveness of the program, she said.