Protypo Greek Centre is committed to developing children’s second language Greek skills. Each child is treated with respect and encouraged to develop a strong sense of bicultural identity. We believe that bilingual education is a life-long process and should be engaging and meaningful for all involved.

We believe that our “Protypakia” learn Greek best when:

• they are provided with opportunities to participate and use Greek in a wide range of activities;
• they are exposed to Greek language which is comprehensible and relevant to their own bilingual / bicultural needs and interests;
• they have direct experience of Greek culture embedded in Greek language teaching and learning;
• they are provided with ongoing feedback about their progress, which includes strategies for transfer of first to second language learning.

Protypo operates a curriculum incorporating, dance and music classes extending Greek language and culture, intercultural awareness, knowledge and skills. Our programs have CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning) an immersion method with cultural topics from Science, Humanities and the Arts. Protypo Staff use Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) and we work in partnership with parents, delivering ‘Parent PD’ sessions to inform parents in all areas of second language learning practices. We offer parent sessions on “Brain-based learning”, “How learning a second language impacts on first language literacy” as well as sessions on “Raising bilingual children”.

Our K-12 programs embed technology (BYOD – bring your own device) providing increased resources and opportunities to access and work with Greek language and materials via e-mail, websites, mobile devices and apps. Our materials are re-purposed for electronic delivery offering an online ‘helpline’ for our learners and Protypo community.

At Protypo we frequently refer to the use of an immersion approach…what is immersion?

We all learned our very first language by immersion (no one translated anything to us because there was simply no language to translate to). Using lots of repetition, young children learn a language - any language naturally and intuitively simply by being immersed in it. The quantity and frequency of words a child is exposed to has a direct influence on how fast that child will learn a language. An immersion approach to learning another language may seem unnatural to adults but is intuitive and effective for children. The energy and excitement of immersion activities in our programs is contagious. Come along and see us in action!