Here’s a neat idea from some parents in Los Angeles. It’s a social group for parents with kids in Mandarin immersion to go out and do things together. Find them on Facebook here.

I just posted a newly updated list of all the Mandarin immersion schools I’ve been able to find here. If you know of one that isn’t on the list, please contact me. I’m going to do some number crunching about the state of Mandarin immersion this week and want to make sure I’ve included all the schools.

If you do have a school that’s not listed, please include the following? Many thanks!

Name of school

year it began offering Mandarin immersion (kindergarten and beyond only, not preschool.)

Are simplified or traditional characters taught?

Is the entire school devoted to Mandarin immersion or is the program a strand within a larger school?

Is the program one-way or two-way? One way means all students must already speak English when they begin. Two-way means that the program is meant to teach Chinese-speaking children English and English-speaking children Mandarin.

Is your program part of the Utah consortium (if you know.)

Is your program an IB school?

Instructional Strategies: Successful Approaches to Immersion Teaching

by Chris Livaccari

Language immersion programs present a range of opportunities and challenges for practitioners. Many language teachers welcome the opportunity to create an immersive language environment in which their students are able to achieve high levels of proficiency and fluency in the target language, and to learn academic as well as everyday language. However, because immersion teachers are not just teaching language but also teaching other academic subjects, they have several extra issues to consider. In any immersion program, language and its partner subjects are equally important, and the most successful approaches balance them evenly.

In this way, successful immersion teaching is the pinnacle of good instruction. Its form of interdisciplinary learning exemplifies the possibilities of education in general. Immersion teachers start from the assumption that barriers between various subject areas are at some level artificial, and that engaging, dynamic, and effective instruction in all subject areas contains many of the same core elements. By their very nature, immersion programs demonstrate the interconnectedness of all knowledge and experience.

Please read more here.

Proposed charter schools in Lynn, Andover invited to submit applications, but Newton and Westborough are not

By Lelan Miller 孟乐岚

Founder of Mandarin Matters in Our Schools in Texas (MMOST) and master’s candidate in Chinese Language Pedagogy

When I began learning Chinese right after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese textbooks for non-native learners were almost non-existent, except for the then well-known John DeFrancis series published by Yale University Press. Though the dialogues and text were flat and staid, the John DeFrancis series was the glorious gold standard for its time. Actually, there was almost nothing available for comparison because textbooks and curricula were mostly mimeographed sheets of vocabulary and readings laboriously copied by professors and graduate teaching assistants.  Those were laborious days for Chinese learning indeed, where everything was on paper and nothing was digitized. I remember using a Magic Slate to practice writing characters so as not to waste notebook paper. Chinese for non-Chinese speaking children in the US was unheard of at the time, let alone textbooks solely for that purpose.

Now there seems to be a plethora of textbooks for all ages, from preschoolers on up to adult learners.

My boys and I have gone through numerous textbook series and curricula to adjust to their changing ages and needs.  In the 1990s we labored through the mainland published Yu Wen 语文 [Language] books brought back to the U.S. by Chinese parents only to realize the patriotic texts proclaiming love for the mainland motherland were not appropriate for learners born and raised in the States. Those were quickly replaced by 中文, [Zhongwen, Chinese] a series written in the mainland which was somewhat better in that it was specifically designed for heritage learners living in the U.S. Although the stories helped with understanding of Chinese culture, very little was applicable to language for daily life such as self-introductions, shopping, and communicating with friends and family.

At that time I decided to teach my children Chinese at home after school and on weekends because the prospect of a Chinese immersion school was dim in the city where we lived at the time and I did not want to wait for one to get started. So we tried the Singapore published小学华文, [Xiǎoxué huáwén, Elementary Chinese] but the texts featuring eternally happy and well behaved children and extremely cheerful teachers were quickly dubbed “Prozac Land” by all the boys.

I was about to give up when I remembered an encounter with a Taiwanese parent 15 years ago whose children had all gone through 華語 [Huáyǔ, Chinese], a free textbook set from Taiwan published in the 1990s. She was moving back home to Taiwan with her family so she gave me the whole set of 12 books that her own children had already completed by that time. So I pulled this set out of a storage box in the back of a closet.

Amazingly these books meshed seamlessly with what we needed and wanted, although I have had to make up my own worksheets, resources and lesson plans for each chapter as we go along, but the results have been well worth it. Stories are taken from daily life activities such as washing the car, cooking a barbeque, and filling up the car at a gas station, and many stories are based on topics of common Chinese cultural knowledge such as the poems of Li Bai, the story of the frog in the well, and the Three Kingdoms story of Zhu Geliang using straw boats to get arrows.  The text is written in traditional characters but I require my boys to learn to read both traditional and simplified characters anyway. After I type up the text in both traditional and simplified characters, I have them read both versions aloud to me.

So the take home lesson of this story is if you are teaching Chinese, always be resourceful and always be open to making up your own lessons, worksheets, and materials to accompany a curriculum that best meets the needs of your learners. Sometimes the most “popular” or most promoted curriculum may not be the best fit for all learners. In fact many teachers and parents must constantly think outside the box when it comes to selecting the right Chinese learning materials and resources. And I have to admit this concept took me decades to learn!

Proceeds benefit The Chinese School’s Library and Technology Center

The Chinese School, part of The St. Louis Language Immersion Schools organization, is holding its inaugural Chinese Moon Festival Celebration and Art Auction this Friday, September 27th, 2013 from 6:30 pm to 9 pm. SLLIS, 4011 Papin Street, St. Louis, MO 63110 on the playground.

The Chinese School is a public charter school in the city of St. Louis, sponsored by UMSL. Children are taught all day in Mandarin in an immersion setting. The school currently serves grades Kindergarten through 2nd grade, and will grow a grade level every year through 5th grade. Students will be bi-lingual and biliterate in Mandarin and English by the end of 5th grade.

Tickets can be purchased in advance for $20 per person by contacting Amy Trapp at tcsparents2013@gmail.com. Tickets will be $25 at the door. Silent Art Auction from 6:30 – 8:00pm, will feature artwork from Beijing artists, local artist and the TCS children. Chinese Beer, Wine and Tea tasting, and observe and learn a traditional wine service. Beer, wine, Mooncakes, appetizers and desserts included in the evening’s celebration.

The Moon festival (also called the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn festival) fell last week on September 19th in 2013. What is the Moon festival? Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, the Chinese celebrate “zhong qiu jie.” Children are told the story of the moon fairy living in a crystal palace, who comes out to dance on the moon’s shadowed surface. The legend surrounding the “lady living in the moon” dates back to ancient times, to a day when ten suns appeared at once in the sky. The Emperor ordered a famous archer to shoot down the nine extra suns. Once the task was accomplished, Goddess of Western Heaven rewarded the archer with a pill that would make him immortal. However, his wife found the pill, took it, and was banished to the moon as a result. Legend says that her beauty is greatest on the day of the Moon festival.

Please read more here.