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Curriculum

Ecole Mosaic offers a bilingual education in French and English for children aged 3-12 years old.  We follow a bespoke integrated curriculum based on the PER – Plan d’études Romand (introduced in 2011 in the canton of Geneva), the French curriculum from the French ministry of Education and on the English National Curriculum.

To confirm the quality of our curriculum, our students take exams or standardised tests in English or French.

To enable each child to fully benefit from our bilingual curriculum, we have set up a compulsory language tutoring programme for students from 3P (6 years old) who have not spent three full school years in a French/English bilingual education.

ACADEMIC PROGRAMME

Our academic programme is supported by different projects throughout the year, e.g. foreign languages ​​and civilisations, science and the End of Year Show, which bring the school together around transdisciplinary topics.

This is an opportunity for students to make sense of their learning by:

  • Being creative
  • Improving their resilience and self-evaluation
  • Having a collaborative approach
  • Communicating
  • Developing social emotional skills

We also offer our students an enriched programme taught by specialists and including:

  • Theatre
  • Dance
  • Music
  • Non-Latin languages
  • Sports
  • STEAM
  • Arts

Our curriculum responds to the challenges of a fast-changing world by helping students develop life skills that will be essential for them to navigate the world of tomorrow successfully.

CYCLE 1

Cycle 1 extends from Kindergarten to 2P, for children from 3 to 5 years old in general.

CYCLE 2

Cycle 2 extends from 3P to 5P, for children from 6 to 8 years old in general.

CYCLE 3

Cycle 3 extends from 6P to 8P and prepares students for secondary school. It is aimed at children from 9 to 11 years old.

Bilingualism and languages

How does a child become bilingual at Ecole Mosaic?

During the first three years, children aged 3 to 5 alternate languages every week. There’s always a short phase of adaptation to the new language. It varies from child to child and can last from two weeks to 3-4 months.

During this period, we give the children lots of attention and patience. We have many strategies to help each child, such as asking another child to rephrase what has just been said.

We encourage teachers not to translate. If the child speaks neither French nor English, we make sure that he or she can meet “buddies” from other classes who speak his or her mother tongue, during the class’s recreational time.

After this stage, understanding comes quickly and we encourage your child to communicate progressively in the new language. Talking isn’t easy, because you have to be confident and take risks. That’s why we always let them express themselves freely, accepting language mixtures: “Today, Hélène m’a poussé in the playground”. This mixture is crucial to the development of oral language in young children.

Reading and writing are more technical, but children quickly understand how to use skills acquired in one mother tongue and apply them in the other. Our pupils become excellent readers using reading strategies from both languages and have a rare literary understanding.

How many years will it take my child to master both languages?

For a child starting school at Ecole Mosaic, things happen naturally and at his or her own pace. It is at the end of 4P that pupils, equipped with the tools of grammar and spelling, show a mastery of both written and spoken language.

For those who join us mid-course, it generally takes three years for a child to acquire, develop and master a new language.

To ensure the success of these students, the school has set up a structure, supervised by the Head of Pedagogy, to welcome children with little or no knowledge of French and/or English. Based on a model inspired by Geneva’s public schools, from 3P onwards, students are taken out of their classrooms to work with a tutor in one or other language, at a rate of 1h30 to 4h30 per week.

Ecole Mosaic