As an international school, our classrooms are tiny global villages of many cultures, backgrounds, and languages. An ESL student is a child whose native language is not English, and whose proficiency in the English language—in the professional judgment of our administrators, ESL specialist, and classroom teachers—is insufficient for them to be able to perform well in our academic program.

The ESL program at CMIS has been designed to meet the needs of students in Grades 1 to 6 who have been identified through admissions screening and assessment, and/or through the classroom teacher's recommendations. All of our ESL students are fully integrated into a regular age/grade appropriate classroom from the start, and receive approximately one hour of “pull out” English instruction in listening, speaking, reading, and writing each day—a model which supports the principles of second language learning. The goal of our ESL program is to assist students to quickly become more confident and successful in their use of the English language, in both academic and social situations.

There is a supplementary fee charged for ESL tuition.