Chinese immersion program to expand to Shue-Medill Middle School By Brooke Schultz bschultz@chespub.com Jul 3, 2018 Chunyuan Zou teaches a lesson in Chinese to her kindergarten class at Downes Elementary School in 2014. When those students matriculate to middle school in Fall 2019, the Chinese immersion program will expand to Shue-Medill Middle School. Downes Elementary…

From: The Conversation July 17, 2018 By Karen D. Thompson, Assistant Professor of Education, Oregon State University and Michael J Kiefer, Associate Professor of Literacy Education, New York University Between 2003 to 2015, multilingual students showed two to three times more progress in reading and math than students who speak English only. With this progress, the achievement gaps between…

A guest column by Jared Turner, The Mandarin Companion You turn the page. A picture is off to the side as you stare at rows of pinyin. But that’s not all… there is something below the pinyin. You squint your eyes and there it is: a row of Chinese characters. At first glance, you know…

Note that the Mandarin program isn’t closing, but the school where it’s been housed since it first opened in 1996, is being demolished and will be rebuilt. The current Potomac Elementary School building opened in 1927. In July the school’s programs will move to Radnor Holding Facility in Bethesda for the duration of construction on the…

A side note: This blog depends to a great extent on the reporting done by local newspapers across the nation, which tell the stories of their communities, schools and issues better than any other source. That’s one reason I always link to the stories rather than posting whole – it’s not only the right thing…

Hot off the presses! I was honored to get to work with Maquita Alexander, Executive Director of Washington YuYing Public Charter School in Washington D.C. on this Brief.   Asia Society Center for Global Education, China Learnings Initiative Chinese Early Language & Immersion Network July 2018   Mandarin immersion programs are growing in popularity, with…

I know this idea is anathema to some parents,who want to know their kids are working hard at Chinese. But really, there is a ton of research showing that the absolute best way to get literate it to read, a lot. It’s called Extensive Reading and it’s not just in Chinese. There’s a whole Foundation that works…