Rosetta Stone Classroom: ACS International Schools

About ACS International Schools

ACS International Schools serve international and local communities via three campuses in Greater London: Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon. The schools are co-educational, and offer day and boarding education to pupils aged 2-18. They educate a multinational student body in accordance with American and internationally recognised educational principles and practices, such as the International Baccalaureate. In 2006, ACS chose the Rosetta Stone Classroom language-learning solution to help drive achievement and integrate its large population of international students into the school environment.

ACS International Schools: At a Glance

• Over 2,400 pupils across three schools
• Offers day and boarding education to students aged 2-18
• Three sites, in Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon

Challenge

With student intake originating from around the world, ACS International Schools needed to address the educational needs of students with different mother tongues, cultural experiences, and educational backgrounds to integrate this diverse student body into the school’s environment. ACS started the search for an online language-learning environment that would be accessible to pupils from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well as catering to different learning styles and ability levels.

Differentiation, particularly in the field of language learning, is extremely important to ACS, and they identified the need for an adaptable, online resource to supplement their specialist language teachers and the traditional learning methodology they were using.

Solution

After recommendations from MFL staff at the school, ACS Egham arranged a trial with Rosetta Stone, which allows teachers and pupils alike access to 25 different languages, ranging from Arabic to Spanish.

By recreating the instinctive language-learning experience we undertake as children learning our first language, Rosetta Stone engages learners from the first screen, enabling learners from distinct linguistic backgrounds to learn simultaneously.

In order to offer language-learning support to a wider audience, after an initial trial, ACS Schools chose to adopt the Rosetta Stone solution for all 2,450 pupils and staff members across three sites. As the program can be accessed from home or school via an internet connection, Rosetta Stone offers high levels of flexibly and scalability to international schools.

Donna Ellery, IT coordinator for ACS Egham, said: “Rosetta Stone is an extremely useful tool for differentiation, and really helps us cater to the different learning styles and backgrounds of international students.”

Results

The program is now in use across all three sites, and has proven popular as a resource for both EAL and MFL teaching. Many of the school’s language teachers use Rosetta Stone during class time once a week, and find it extremely useful. As well as serving a learning tool for pupils, a centralised management tool, Rosetta Stone Manager allows teachers and administrators to track pupil progress, edit the available curriculum and perform comparative analysis on individual and class progress.

Donna Ellery commented: “Our students really enjoy the freedom to study in the free time, and the ability to access the program from home.

“The management tool allows teachers to monitor and analyse pupil progress, which allows them to reinforce areas of difficulty in the classroom, providing a blended language-learning solution“.

The popularity of the program has been such that parents and families of pupils are increasingly requesting access to the program.

“Rosetta Stone is an extremely useful tool for differentiation, and really helps us cater to the different learning styles and backgrounds of international students.” —Donna Ellery, IT coordinator for ACS Egham

About Rosetta Stone Classroom

Rosetta Stone Classroom Version 3 is a powerful learning tool that blends seamlessly into a teacher’s overall language-learning curriculum. Features such as speech analysis tools, grammar and spelling components, and predefined course templates effectively complement classroom teaching expertise. Rosetta Stone Classroom provides the support teachers need with Rosetta Stone Manager, a built-in management tool that delivers real-time reporting capabilities, details on student progress, and userfriendly administrative functionalities. The software offers flexible license solutions that are tailored to meet a school’s specific needs, technology environments and requirements. Available in more than 30 different languages, Rosetta Stone Classroom affords teachers the opportunity to entrust critical language skill development to the software so that invaluable classroom time can focus on topic-based activities that bring language learning to life.

Rosetta Stone Benefits

Rosetta Stone offers a number of benefits to international schools, including:

• Support in differentiation
• Ability to cater to a range of different learning styles
• Accessibility both on campus and from home, via the internet

About Rosetta Stone Ltd

Rosetta Stone is changing the way the world learns languages. Rosetta Stone offers a highly personalised, interactive platform that is acclaimed for its speed and power to unlock the natural language learning ability in everyone. Available in more than 30 languages, the Rosetta Stone language-learning solution is used by schools, organisations and millions of individuals in over 150 countries throughout the world.