NAMPA — Enter the New Horizons kindergarten and you’ll quickly realize you’re not in a normal classroom.

The Nampa School District’s dual language magnet school, housed in portable classrooms behind Nampa’s Ronald Reagan Elementary School, opened this fall to 104 kindergartners, half of whom have grown up speaking Spanish, the other half speaking English. The students, who were chosen by lottery last spring, have varying levels of fluency in their languages.

The goal of New Horizons, which will add another grade each year through fifth grade, is to have students fluent in both languages once they leave elementary school.

The Nampa School District began the program this fall to give native English speakers access to the same kinds of bilingual programs already offered to native Spanish speakers. Also, district officials say research indicates that students involved in two-way bilingual programs score higher in reading tests than do their peers.

About 70 percent of instruction at the New Horizons kindergarten is in Spanish. The kindergartners sit around a carpet and do alphabet work together in Spanish, break into small groups to work on Spanish songs and worksheets, and do math in Spanish. But the Spanish-speaking kindergartners participate in an English as a Second Language program, and the English speakers also have an English component.

Special classes, like music, library, physical education and computers, are also taught in English.

New Horizons Principal Phil Cano said the focus is predominantly on Spanish because the English language is more dominant in the culture. Administrators worked to keep the ratio of Spanish speakers to English speakers around 50-50.

“It would be difficult to have it any other way because of the pervasiveness and strength of language,” Cano said. “Kids want to revert back to their native language.”

Since the greater focus in the school’s early years is Spanish, teachers speak constantly to the students in that language while making sure the English speakers do the same.

“The high point for us is seeing the interaction” between Spanish and English, Cano said, adding that he often enjoys watching the kids try to say the Spanish words they’ve learned to their teachers.

The kindergarten runs on extended days, giving both sessions an extra half-hour of instruction time. Two teachers and two paraprofessionals teach the students.

“The strength of the program is in the classroom, of course,” Cano said. “You can see and hear the enthusiasm with which (teachers) are going about speaking Spanish and teaching Spanish.”

Teacher Viola Fernandez said the key in the early days of the program is “lots of encouragement, lots of repetition and modeling, modeling, modeling.”

She typically gives instructions in Spanish, using gestures to help the native English speakers understand. If the instruction is very important and she wants to make absolutely certain her meaning is understood, Fernandez repeats the instruction in English.

By the end of the year, students are expected to know basic vocabulary, colors, months of the year and days of the week in both languages — all things kindergartners are supposed to know anyway, but these students will know them in two languages.

Fernandez acknowledged that the program will be difficult for all kids involved.

“It might be hard to learn to read in a second language when they don’t know how to read in their first,” Fernandez said.

But the teachers try to maintain a comfortable atmosphere where students can learn.

“Learning a second language is stressful,” Fernandez said. “We’re doing it in a non-stressful environment through songs, games and poems.

“We’re going to make it work because we know our goal”, she added. “We know what dual language looks like.”