An American and Greek Language Integrated Curriculum for a Dual Language Immersion Program: The Case of Odyssey Charter School

Abstract

In September 2017, Odyssey Charter School (OCS) introduced an innovative English-Greek dual language immersion (DLI) program; the implementation began in kindergarten and will expand one grade every year. Immersion students are expected to follow the same standards-based curriculum as non-immersion students. To this aim, an integrated English and Greek language and math curriculum was designed. The aim of this chapter is to present the rationale of its design as well as its theoretical principles. The curriculum was based on the Common Core State Standards and the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, as these have been aligned by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. An important innovation introduced in the particular curriculum is its exclusive focus on kindergarteners’ oral skills; this is expected to allow them time to familiarize themselves with the phonological features of the Greek language but also to build some lexical knowledge and basic communication skills before the introduction of literacy.