Houston Mandarin immersion school opens this week
School to offer core classes in Chinese
By Flori Meeks
Published 4:24 p.m., Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Houston school district is launching its first elementary-level magnet offering full-immersion Mandarin Chinese instruction.
The Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School, opening this fall at Gordon Elementary School, 6300 Ave. B in Bellaire, will serve students in pre-kindergarten through the second grade.
Students’ core subjects – language arts, math, science and social science – will be taught mostly in Mandarin Chinese, which is dialect spoken in Beijing that was adopted as the official spoken language for China. Some instructional time also will be devoted to developing English skills.
Several factors went into the district’s decision to create the new magnet program, PrincipalBryan Bordelon said.
“There’s the acknowledgement of China’s growing prominence on the world stage, and we are an international city,” said Bordelon, who speaks Mandarin Chinese. “We are developing future leaders of diplomacy, of business, of the community, and that doesn’t start in college.”
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 
Students in Mandarin Chinese Program can consider watching Chinese dubbed movies after school. Many American movies have been translated and dubbed into Mandarin Chinese. Disney / Pixar movies such as Toy Stories, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Incredibles, or Hollywood hits such as Home Alone, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, or even “National Treasure”, the exact movies the students have been watching since their childhood, but this time in Mandarin Chinese. Nearly all movies come with both Chinese and English conversations, AND English or Chinese subtitles so that students can learn at their own pace.
Google “Chinese dubbed movies” keywords, and you can find many of them.