World Languages 

In ninth grade, Heschel students may choose to study Spanish, French, or Latin. Each language may be taken for up to four years.

The goal of our French and Spanish classes is to make students as proficient as possible in four areas - speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Thus, the classes are conducted almost exclusively in the target language. Plunged into an immersion environment, the target language is the only available tool with which to communicate. Authentic situations for real communication are thus at the core of our courses, and grammar and vocabulary are studied as a means to the end of communication. In class, students do skits, conduct interviews and surveys, present individual projects, and engage in group and class discussions.

From ninth grade until senior year, the topics reflect cultural aspects of the French and Spanish speaking world. In 9th and 10th grades, students learn how to handle practical, everyday situations using simple structures. In ninth grade, they learn to introduce themselves, talk about their family and friends, describe their classes and activities, order food in a restaurant, and buy food and clothing in stores, using the present and past tenses.

In tenth grade, students continue to learn about everyday situations: how to conduct a conversation at the bank or at the post office, order tickets at the movie theater, and how to converse in a doctor's office. They also read their first collection of unabridged short stories, which helps them develop their reading skills and mastery of the grammar as well as their speaking skills through in-class presentations.

In eleventh grade, students develop their ability to conceptualize the language and express more abstract thoughts. Through literature they learn new structures and tenses, and make presentations on aspects of culture presented in the texts.

Senior year gives students the opportunity to put the material they learned in ninth to eleventh grades into intense spoken and written practice. Using a variety of socio-political issues as core topics for the year, students reinforce their knowledge of the language and culture by doing presentations, reading, acting in a play, and writing essays. Because students are by then proficient speakers and writers, one of their tasks is to teach one class of ninth grade, solely in the target language.

Classics at Heschel

Studying Latin allows students to understand Roman civilization and how it has shaped the world in which we live: alphabet, vocabulary (60% of English words come from Latin), political system (republic, empire), malls (replicas of Hadrian’s market), architecture, engineering (arch and concrete are inherited from Rome), etc.

Students may study Latin in grades 9 to 12. The program explores the Latin language (Jenney's series), Latin literature (especially Ovid, Virgil, Horace, and Catullus), and the Roman civilization (Cambridge Latin Course; Roman Life). Students learn Latin vocabulary in correlation with the English Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots series and connections with English derivatives are made as often as possible. In 12th grade the seniors are offered the possibility to study Classical Greek (Athenaze series) with the same linguistic methods they have used learning Latin.

All Latin courses are enhanced by the integration of technology, including software, electronic dictionaries, highlights of grammatical structure, links to grammatical data and the Internet. Visual resources (movies and documentaries) as well as audio recordings are used in class.