• McIlvaine hosts Camp Ni Hao to further Chinese immersion

• The hallways at J. Ralph McIlvaine Early Childhood Center were filled with the sounds of children chattering and singing while teachers instructed on Wednesday. What makes these otherwise average occurrences unique is that all of the chattering, singing and instruction are being conducted entirely in Mandarin.

• SARAH BARBANIncoming first graders at McIlvaine Early Childhood Center’s immersion camp, Camp Ni Hao, make a paper dragon dance in their physical activity class

• By Sarah Barban
  sarah.barban@doverpost.com
  @SarahDoverPost
  Posted Jul. 26, 2013 @ 11:07 amMagnolia, Del.  —

  The hallways at J. Ralph McIlvaine Early Childhood Center were filled with the sounds of children chattering and singing while teachers instructed on Wednesday. What makes these otherwise average occurrences unique is that all of the chattering, singing and instruction are being conducted entirely in Mandarin.

  This week McIlvaine hosted Camp Ni Hao, a camp designed to help rising first graders who participated in McIlvaine’s Chinese immersion program last year hone their skills before they begin their second year of Mandarin at either W.B. Simpson or Allen Frear elementary schools. The camp also offered incoming kindergartens an introduction to Mandarin, prior to the start of the school year.

  McIlvaine started its mandarin program last school year and so far has had great success, said Principal Sherry Kijowski.

Read more: http://www.doverpost.com/article/20130726/NEWS/130729837/1004/NEWS#ixzz2aYOzCrki

After I wrote about finding books for immersion students to read in Chinese I found out that there exists an entire universe of easy-to-read novels in Spanish and French for new learners. These sometimes go under the moniker TRPS (for Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.) It’s a method of teaching foreign languages in which teachers focus on stories with comprehensible input rather than a textbook.

That’s exactly what happens in an immersion classroom—teachers use language the students can understand, limiting vocabulary, constantly asking easy comprehension question and short grammar explanations to help broaden and deepen students’ understanding of the language.

The TRPS method has its origins in the theories of Stephen Krashen, a professor of second-language acquisition, bilingual education and reading at the University of Southern Calif. whose research has heavily influenced immersion education in this country.

A Spanish teacher named Blaine Ray in California took Krashen’s ideas and ran with them. Ray began writing very easy to read stories in Spanish for his students. There now exist dozens of these novels, in Spanish, French and other languages. Some are set entirely in the present tense, some also use the past tense, each gives the number of words used. Here’s an example of a Level 1 Spanish novel on the TPRS website:

Felipe Alou: Desde los valles a las montañas

Under ordinary circumstances, the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of becoming a Major League Baseball player, but Felipe Alou’s circumstances in 1955 were anything but ‘ordinary’… He was a black athlete living in the Dominican Republic, and he spoke no English- not exactly a recipe for success in the U.S., especially during the height of the civil rights movement.  This is Felipe’s amazing (true) story of perseverance and determination to beat overwhelming odds and insurmountable obstacles to become one of baseball’s greatest players and managers.

Total word count: 6500   Unique word count: 150。 Page count: 60

Now in Mandarin

Some of these stories have been rewritten for beginning Chinese students. I ordered one last week for my fourth grader and she read it in the course of two summer days without having to look up a single word. Her review:

“This was kind of boring but I read it and it wasn’t hard, and I didn’t even know there was a glossary in the back. Anna lives in America but she goes to China. Her friends have expensive stuff. She’s a teen-ager.”

Well, boring or not it was the first novel without pictures that she’d sat down to read so I say Hurray!

The books are nicely done. The stories are set in easy-to-understand situations, often in the United States. And in a touch I really liked, English words such as names like Anna and Los Angeles were written in English, not Chinese. That’s helpful because often the characters used to transliterate from Chinese are complex and rarely-seen, making them difficult for beginning readers to comprehend. The book is in both characters and pinyin (on facing pages) and features a full glossary in the back.

The Squidforbrains.com site has six of these novels listed, which you can find here

The books:

Susan you mafan: Susan有麻烦

Susan is caught on the treadmill of life in her boring town — dealing with an obsolete computer, a nagging mother, and that nice guy at the ValuMart who just doesn’t know she exists. Until one day, that is — when a chance errand brings her family something that will change their lives — well, not forever, but at least for a few months!

“Susan you mafan” is a true first-year Chinese reader. The first chapter can be read in the first month of Chinese study, and each chapter builds on the language that has been used in earlier in the book. The story is 9,871 words long, uses 207 unique Chinese characters, and contains 431 words.

“Anna Mei Banfa!” Anna 没办法！

is a short, simple novel in Chinese characters and Pinyin that emphasizes and repeats the highest-frequency words and phrases of the language while telling a story. First in a series for Chinese learners, “Anna Mei Banfa” tells the story of Anna, a high school freshman living in upstate New York, who is frustrated with her family and her problems. An unexpected opportunity presents itself when her high school announces a chance for a student to travel to Taiwan for a summer. While living in southern Taiwan, Anna experiences the local culture and makes new friends.

Learners of Chinese may choose to read the Chinese characters or turn the page to see the Hanyu Pinyin romanization.? A full glossary of the words as they appear in the text makes this reader accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of Chinese.

The Three Pandas

Based on the Three Bears, this story is about three pandas who dart out of their suburban Beijing home for just a few minutes to do a little shopping, but when they get back…they discover an unexpected visitor!

This 700+ character story is told in simple Chinese, using only 114 unique words and 89 Chinese characters in all. The text systematically repeats the highest-frequency vocabulary while still telling a coherent story, complete with unexpected twists and turns. A great little read for a classroom library or for someone learning Chinese on his own. A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

Pandarella

The nearly-classic tale of the hardworking girl who just wants to go to the biggest party of the year…and might get to, with some help from a celebrity’s little brother!

Pandarella draws on the familiar but inserts twists and turns to keep readers engaged. Words are repeated in novel ways. The 1072-word text of the story contains only 88 unique words and 87 unique Chinese characters.

A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

Herbert’s Birthday

It’s Herbert’s birthday…but life is a drag when your friends don’t give you what you really want…

This easy-to-read story helps new readers of Chinese become confident and fluent. Told in just 46 different words and 50 Chinese characters, the book is over 300 words long. Repetition helps the reader become familiar with and instantly recognize the most important, most frequently used characters in the language.

A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

The Center for Applied Linguistics is updating it’s two-way immersion program directory. It includes multiple languages, Mandarin among them. Schools that serve both English and Mandarin speaking students should add in their information.

CAL’s Two Way Immersion Directory – Updates in Progress CAL has re-opened its Two-Way Immersion Directory to continue to gather information about dual language and two-way immersion programs around the country. It is important to include all programs in order to comprehensively promote bilingual, dual language, and two-way immersion education with policy makers and stakeholders.Please help us keep the directory current by adding or updating your program.Learn more and connect to the TWI directory.

Parents and teachers often lament the lack of appropriate books in Chinese for immersion students. But while we whine, the kids are getting down to work. If there aren’t books you want to read in Mandarin, write them yourself. That’s the lesson we can all learn from Annemarie Hilton, age 10.

Hilton is  going into fifth grade in Wasatch Elementary in Utah. This week she published her first book: Sally的冒险.

Annemarie wrote the short novel when she was in second grade, in English. It’s about the adventures of a girl named Sally. “Some of the things that happened in the book happened in my life (I really did get stiches after slamming my finger in the door!)” she says in the introduction.

She’s also a Mandarin immersion student and this past summer her father John Hilton encouraged her to translate it into Chinese. “She has worked really hard on it (60+ hours this summer),” he says proudly. “We uploaded it to Amazon and she is now a published author!”

The e-book is available for $2.99 here.

Her father hopes seeing the book will both show families “what these immersion kids can do” and also give them something to read. And “perhaps more importantly it will encourage their kids to do writing in Chinese.”

In her introduction Annemarie is honest about her Chinese skills. In Utah immersion begins in first grade, so she’d had just four years of Chinese when she translated the story.

“So I hope you know that my translation won’t be perfect. I am just a kid!! I kenw a lot of the words, but some I looked up on Google Translate,” she wrote.

She says she also made mistakes. “Instead of writing 他们 I wrote 它们,” she says, confusing the word for ‘they’ meaning people for the ‘they’ for  things.

“When I tried to translate ‘French Toast’ it was法式吐 which means French Dirt. (I wound up changing the English to be “breakfast” instead of French toast.” As another example, instead of ‘tangled’ I put ‘lettuce’ (on accident!)”

The book is presented in a paragraph by paragraph translation, first in English and then in Chinese using simplified characters. It should be easy to read for most third or fourth grade Mandarin immersion students.

I look forward to writing about more books by students in the coming years!

As many of you know, I’m just about finished writing a book on immersion called “A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion.”

One of the pieces I’m missing is the experience of students who’ve gotten far enough in Chinese to be able to talk about whether or not they’re glad they’ve learned it.

If you have children in middle school or beyond who might be willing to write a little bit about what their experience has been in immersion, I’d love to include their thoughts. (I’d also be happy to talk with them by phone if writing is not their thing.)

Most of the parents reading this book will be people with preschoolers contemplating whether to sign them up for Chinese immersion or grade school parents trying to understand how it all works.

Hearing from teens and college students about how it feels at the other end would be very helpful to them.

I’m happy to use the quotes anonymously if you’d prefer.

Some questions to start with, (but whatever thoughts they might have is fine):

Did you like being in immersion?
Do you feel like you speak Chinese?
How did it feel to learn it?
Are you glad your parents put you in the program?
What would you tell your parents now about the idea of putting their kids in immersion, if you could go back in time to when you were in preschool?
Do you think you’ll use Chinese in your life?

Many thanks,
Beth Weise

 The First Mandarin immersion school in Massachusetts will now become the first K – 12 Mandarin immersion program in the nation.

By Elizabeth Weise

The Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS) is in the town of Hadley in western Massachusetts. The school opened in 2007, as a K-8^th grade regional public charter school. It was the first Mandarin immersion program in the state and one of the first in the northeast. The school was recently authorized to add a high school.  In the 2013-2014 school year, the school will have roughly 320 students and will expand to 584 at full capacity in grades K – 12 in 2018. Students typically enter in Kindergarten, sixth or ninth grade.  Entrance is by lottery and as a public charter school is tuition-free.

PVCICS is a ‘whole school’ Mandarin program with an extended day. Students in kindergarten and first grade are in school 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM and students in second grade and higher are in school 8:30 AM to 4:15 PM.  Kindergarten and first grade students spend 75% of their day in Mandarin and 25% in English. At second grade it becomes a 50/50 model and then a 25/75 model starting in sixth grade or roughly two hours per day taught in Chinese in later grades.  But given the demands of a rigorous curriculum in two languages it still doesn’t seem like enough time. “We have almost an eight hour day and we still feel sometimes we don’t have enough time,” to do everything we’d like to, says Kathleen Wang, principal.

It is a one-way immersion program, meaning almost all students come in with no background in Chinese language. Most are native English speakers although for some, Mandarin is a third language. The school uses simplified characters as the foundation, but through calligraphy classes exposes students to both character sets. The school introduces pinyin in third grade.

The school was co-founded by Kathleen Wang, who is now principal, and Richard Alcorn, the school’s executive director.  In the spring of 2013 it received permission from the state of Massachusetts to extend into high school and is a candidate school for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme. Authorization by the IB Organization normally takes two years, so entering ninth graders should be eligible to participate in an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme that starts in eleventh grade. The school expects to become the first fully articulated kindergarten through grade 12 Chinese language and culture public charter school in the nation.

Hadley is about 100 miles west of Boston in an area known both for farming and colleges. In the surrounding area are the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College, Amherst College and Hampshire College. There is a small population of Chinese speakers in the area but the school’s population was always expected to be “very diverse,” says Wang.  PVCICS has some students from families affiliated with the area colleges but most families are not and come from all over its region of service which spans three counties encompassing 39 different communities.  One of the counties is the poorest in the state of Massachusetts and two of the poorest cities in western Massachusetts are in its region of service.  “The school’s students come from a geographic area roughly 50 miles across and we’re a Title I targeted assistance school”, she says.

That diversity is one of the things that made the school attractive to the federal government and helped it get a $1.5 million, five-year Foreign Language Assistance Program, or FLAP, grant in 2008.  These grants were crucial to the founding of many Mandarin immersion schools nationwide. When Congress eliminated the FLAP grants due to federal budget cuts in 2011, it was a surprise to PVCICS and many other programs because the FLAP program had been in existence for decades. “It’s tiny to the federal budget but to schools it’s a lifeline. We’re very thankful to have had the funding because it was very important to help us build the program,” says Wang. Thankfully PVCICS had its program in place when the grant ended, so it was less of a blow than it was to other programs.

Although the school is only seven years old, interest in Chinese immersion has grown enormously during that time.  “When we started there were fewer than 20 Chinese immersion programs in the country,” said co-founder Alcorn. In 2010 it was named one of the first of twenty schools nationally in the Hanban-Asia Society Confucius Classrooms Network. Today its students are meeting and surpassing all the benchmarks its charter has set for English, Mandarin and mathematics.

PVCICS got its start because Wang and Alcorn, were interested in a bilingual education for their children and they had also been working on a Massachusetts state initiative to promote improving international education in the state’s schools.  “We felt strongly that international education include high proficiency in world languages, of which we were focused on Mandarin,” says Wang.

They began researching Mandarin programs and worked with local school districts to start one but found little interest in the early 2000s.  “We talked to hundreds of parents and found there was interest throughout the Pioneer Valley.” says Wang.  They decided to apply to open a regional charter school, something possible under Massachusetts state law, because they wanted to offer a public Chinese immersion program to a wide range of families in the Pioneer Valley.  Families come from almost every socio-economic, linguistic, racial and ethnic background.  Being a regional public charter school made sense plus it would service a large enough population to support the program.

When the school opened in 2007, it had 42 students in one cohort of kindergarteners and one cohort of first graders.  Each year grades and staff were added and facilities were renovated to accommodate growth.  “Starting a new school requires commitment and work however providing an opportunity to the families in this region is our utmost priority.” says Wang.  Since then the school has thrived and continues to grow.