Language Immersion Schools picked for project to diversify leadership

Photograph by Bill Zurheide

Local charter joins ‘Network Accelerator’

 

Kindergarten students interact at the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools’ Spanish School.

Posted: Thursday, February 27, 2014 12:05 am

By American staff

Saint Louis Language Immersion Schools has been selected for the inaugural cohort for the Charter Network Accelerator, which is focused on helping experienced leaders, with an emphasis on leaders of color, in designing and scaling their networks of schools.

Rhonda Broussard, founder and president of St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, is African-American.

St. Louis Language Immersion Schools (SLLIS) is a network of public charter schools whose mission is “to position all children for success in local and global economies through holistic, intellectually inspiring language immersion programs.” SLLIS currently offers tuition-free immersion education in Spanish, French and Mandarin to 871 students.

Please read more here.

The Mandarin Matrix is a set of Chinese readers previously published as Primary Mandarin.

They come from Hong Kong and consist of a series of books:

•         An Interactive Online Classroom with over 1000 activities and games
•         240 Chinese Readers ranging from beginner to advanced, organized into a six-color coded system
•         48 Big Books which are great for classroom use (for the teacher to show as she reads aloud)
•         8 sets of Flashcards with 400 Chinese characters to reinforce character recognition and learning
•         13 Max and Mei storybooks with rich cultural references for younger readers
•             4 Pangu Comic books with beautiful illustrations for advanced readers

They’re available in the United States from China Sprout.

eGlobalReader

http://www.eglobalreader.com

This site offers books in Chinese that can toggle between characters, pinyin and English. They only have eight books so far but plan to expand.

I’ve created a new tab on the blog, 2014 Mandarin language summer camps. You can see it above or click here.  If you know of camps which aren’t listed here, please send me information about them.

By Lelan Miller 孟樂嵐

Heather Clydesdale of the Asia Society has an article online “To Grow Good Writers, Feed them Great Literature”. Literature based reading and writing instruction is commonly utilized in English language programming throughout elementary and middle schools. This article discusses how to find great literature that can be used in Chinese immersion programming that employ literature based reading and writing instruction:

http://asiasociety.org/education/chinese-language-initiatives/grow-good-writers-feed-them-great-literature

Especially noteworthy is the list of resources with online texts in Chinese at the end of the article. This one (in traditional characters) is an excellent source of online literature. Programs using simplified characters may want to consider appropriate adaptations of the texts to meet student needs.

儿童文化 http://children.moc.gov.tw/home.php

A new Intergenerational school and an immersion school in Mandarin and Spanish planned for Cleveland

Nancy Szilagyi, a teacher at the Near West Intergenerational School, gives students Madeline Schmidt, 6, left, and Farrah Albritton, 8, some feedback on the stories they wrote and advice on how they might be improved.

Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer

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By Patrick O’Donnell, The Plain Dealer 
on February 12, 2014 at 9:30 AM, updated February 12, 2014 at 9:33 AM

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland could soon have a third Intergenerational charter school and a new foreign language immersion school that aims to teach Mandarin and Spanish to English speakers.

Both proposed new charter schools were recommended to the Cleveland school board Tuesday night by Eric Gordon, the district’s Chief Executive Officer.

Please read more here.

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Families in Cleveland, Ohio are working to develop  Global Ambassadors Language Academy, GALA.  GALA will be the first Mandarin Immersion school in the entire state of Ohio and the first one way immersion school in Northeast Ohio.  Very exciting news today in our newspaper:

GALA will be the first one-way Spanish immersion school in Northeast Ohio and the first Mandarin immersion school in the state of Ohio!  

GALA’s mission is to ensure each student achieves lifelong academic success, bilingualism, and appreciation for diversity, in an engaging and academically rigorous language immersion environment.

A nice example of a Mandarin parent group helping get the word out about their program. This group is in Orange County, Calif.