Recall from Chapter 3 that during our tour of Calvary School, Sra. Soto identified the overall principle of two-way immersion (TWI) program design as ‘designing instructional activities to promote desired interactions among the children’. While this was not particularly evident in any of the classroom activity structures described in the preceding three chapters, this perspective was reflected in her design of the Housekeeping and Blocks Centers. It is also useful to keep in mind Sra. Soto’s criticism of the Calvary teacher’s science lesson, ‘Her Centers were very teacher-oriented, without enough exploration on the part of the kids. She was guiding them, and I was disturbed by that’. These reflections suggest that, at least in terms of Centers design, Sra. Soto considered interactions among children to be crucial and to be fostered by indirect design rather than by the kind of direct teacher–student interactions characteristic of the other classroom activities.

The Centers always took place in the morning, during Spanish time. Two large sections of the classroom were designated as play Centers, Blocks (La Zona de Construcción) and Housekeeping (La Casa). The Centers were side by side, occupying about one third of the classroom space, and the name of each Center was written clearly in both Spanish and English, displayed prominently on the wall within each Center. Center play was a voluntary activity; when the children finished their work at the tables, they were allowed to choose which of these Centers they wished to play in, and their wish was usually granted as long as they were able to make the request in Spanish. Both Centers seemed highly popular. Sra. Soto eventually decreed that no more than four children at a time could participate in each Center, but this rule was only occasionally invoked. Usually, the Centers were fully occupied by children moving freely between the two Centers, creating an atmosphere of rather chaotic enjoyment.