English Instruction for Native Speakers

About 20% of Speak Up’s clients are students who are native speakers of English. These are students who spent years living abroad in English-speaking countries. We also work with students who have attended international schools where the language of instruction was English, or students who have English-speaking parents and speak English at home.

Speak Up provides a challenging and diverse curriculum for native speakers that fits their unique goals. Our teachers provide extensive training in spelling, reading, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing to mimic the experience the student would have received in their English Language Arts classroom abroad.

Here are some of the options that we offer for our native-speaking students:

• Small Groups – Students are grouped by grade or reading ability into small groups of 4-6 children that meet online or in-person. In the groups, students maintain their fluency by meeting and making friends with other native-speaking children. At the same time, our Speak Up teacher works on reading, spelling, writing mechanics and sentence building. Speak Up currently has small groups available for native speakers at a kindergarten through fourth-grade level.
• Private lessons – Working one-on-one with our teachers, students can strengthen their reading and writing to keep pace with English speakers abroad. Common classroom activities include: spelling tests, paragraph and essay building, learning new vocabulary words through educational texts, and fun speaking games like Taboo and Apples to Apples. We recommend private lessons for any student age three and above.
• Private lessons for older students – Students who have already mastered elementary reading and writing can enjoy lessons with a teacher that focus on writing essays and understanding literature. These students often work on: reading advanced texts such as To Kill a Mockingbird or A Christmas Carol, which they would most likely encounter were they still abroad; writing essays to explore books’ themes, writing narrative essays and persuasive essays, and advanced vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Additionally, these students can explore project-based learning that suits their interests. Our current native-speaking students have completed projects such as writing a manual for at-home hamster care or creating a Minecraft Newsletter.
• Enrichment Opportunities – Speak Up also offers special enrichment opportunities like a Harry Potter Book club and a debate club that can suit the needs of advanced and curious students alike. Additionally, students are surrounded and immersed into an English-only environment where they can make friends and have fun in their native tongue.

Looking to learn more? Email Speak Up at info@speakup.co.il to register your child now.