Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Australia’s only Mandarin immersion program expanding

    Coast immersion stands up to the test

    Thomas Chamberlin   |  June 24th, 2010

    Varsity Lakes College student Taylor Cassar learns in Mandarin Picture: DAVID CLARK

    STUDENTS in the Chinese immersion program at Varsity College (in Queensland, Australia) are outperforming English-speaking classes in national literacy and numeracy tests.

    The popularity of the school’s courses has prompted moves into a new $6 million teaching facility.

    Varsity College has about 200 students from years 6 to 10 involved in the immersion and two floors of a five-storey building under construction will be dedicated to the teaching method.

    The program started five years ago and is one of three state school immersion programs on the Gold Coast, along with French immersion at Benowa State High School and Japanese immersion at Robina State High School.

    “We are the only Chinese immersion program we know of in Australia,” said executive principal Jeff Davis. “We’ve actually doubled the intake and there are people from all around the Gold Coast that want to become part of it.”

    Read the rest of the article here.

  • MIPC meeting with San Francisco Public Library about Mandarin materials

    A report from the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council library task force:

    June 2010

    As students in the Mandarin immersion program reach higher grades, finding them books to read and videos to watch becomes more of an issue.

    The MIPC held a meeting towards the end of school this year with Carla Kozak, Children and Youth Services Collection Development Specialist at the San Francisco Public Library, to talk about the needs of our students and how we can work with the library to help families find books and materials.

    Topics they addressed included:

    – Creating lists of age appropriate books with titles in pinyin so non-Chinese speaking parents can more easily reserve them online

    – Buying more simplified as opposed to traditional character books

    –  Educating library staff about the growing numbers of SFUSD students learning simplified characters. Several parents have reported library staff being dismissive of and even hostile towards finding books in simplified characters.

    Thanks to Helen Tong, the 4th grade Mandarin teacher at Starr King, and parents Stacey Leyton and Lisa Want, for arranging and attending the meeting.

    Notes from their meeting are below:

    Acquisition of library materials

    The SFPL has definitely gotten the message that they need to order more books with simplified characters and more multimedia items in Mandarin, although they still have strong needs in Cantonese/traditional characters as well, so they have to figure out a way to meet both sets of needs.

    The SFPL works with a variety of different vendors, including local and overseas vendors, to purchase Chinese language books.  They used to have more freedom to buy books off the shelf but that is not the case anymore, and they have to follow City rules for working with contractors.

    The budget for ordering Chinese language materials is being cut, as are all other City budgets, but is still relatively large.  They just recently ordered the Rainbow Fairy books in English and Chinese but she was not sure whether this was in simplified or traditional characters.  One problem she mentioned is that many of the Chinese/English books that come with CD’s have English CD’s, because the materials are designed for Chinese speakers learning English as opposed to the opposite.

    Most importantly, they are HAPPY to get suggestions about specific books and multimedia materials that would meet our kids’ needs.  There is a way to suggest specific titles online.  But Ms. Tong offered that she could work with other teachers to develop a list of suggested materials appropriate for kids enrolled in Mandarin immersion.  Carla said that it’s important to prioritize — a list of 100 books is better than a list of 1,000  And as much information as possible is really helpful: title, publication date, suggested vendor, etc.

    Carla also suggested that Ms. Tong attend the annual meeting the SFPL has with East-West Books, when East-West Books highlights new materials.

    One caveat is that they have exhausted their budget for this year and so won’t really start ordering new materials until July 2010.  And as you might imagine, for Chinese materials in particular, it takes some time for the books to arrive and then be processed before they make it to the shelves.

    Cataloguing

    Cataloguing is a different department.  We should be able to tell approximate age level by the labels – jPS is for preschool to grade 2, jR is for beginning readers, jF is fiction, j and then a Dewey number is nonfiction.  They don’t currently have a way of distinguishing between simplified and traditional characters in the labeling.  Carla is going to follow up on whether it would be possible to use a system like colored dots to make this easier for parents.

    Carla said it is not possible to have the titles of the books translated into English and put on the books’ spine to make it easier for non-Chinese-speaking parents to identify appropriate materials.  For example, the Chinatown library has used a system of green dots to identify bilingual books.

    Location of materials

    For AV materials, the library is going to start “floating collections.”  That means that the materials will first be placed where there are identified gaps.  Then they will stay wherever they are returned.  So if you order something from the Chinatown library but then return it to the Glen Park library, it will stay at Glen Park.

    The librarian at Potrero Hill has already expressed a need for more Chinese language materials so they are trying to meet that need.

    Contact information

    Carla’s contact information is below.

    Carla Kozak

    Children and Youth Services Collection Development Specialist

    San Francisco Public Library

    190 – 9th Street

    San Francisco, CA 94103

    415-557-4271

    ckozak@sfpl.org

  • Columnist: Oregon needs more Mandarin immersion

    The Oregonian, June 23, 2010

    By Dave Porter

    Some local school districts, boards and administrators are holding back development of foreign language immersion programs necessary for Oregon’s economic future.

    There are two current examples: the West Linn-Wilsonville School Board recently canceled tits 1-year-old Spanish immersion program, while Portland Public Schools failed again this year to expand either its Mandarin or Japanese immersion programs in spite of parent demand sufficient for at least another classroom in each case.

    This year PPS’s Japanese immersion program at Richmond had 118 qualified applicants for 71 kindergarten slots next year, leaving out 47-plus others who missed mandatory meetings. At 25 per class at Richmond, that’s almost two additional classrooms. At the Mandarin immersion at Woodstock, there were 94 qualified applicants for 60 slots next year, leaving out 34-plus of those missing mandatory meetings. At 30 per class at Woodstock, there were enough children for another classroom. Similar demand-to-supply situations have existed in each of the past five years.

    Oregon needs these foreign language immersion programs to grow.

    Read the rest of the article here.

  • Thursday workshop on 2nd language acquisition at SF State University

    This free, all day lecture is being sponsored by the San Francisco State University’s STARTALK project. STARTALK is a Presidential Initiative to Fund Summer Programs in Critical Languages including Chinese.

    The Fundamentals: Second Language Acquisition

    June 24, 2010 9:30am– 3:30pm

    Sponsored by
    STARTALK at San Francisco State University
    Title III ELL Professional Development Project

    Presenter:  Dr. Stephen Krashen

    Description: Stephen Krashen is best known for developing the first comprehensive theory of second language acquisition, introducing the concept of sheltered subject matter teaching, and as the co-inventor of the Natural Approach to foreign language teaching. He has also contributed to theory and application in the area of bilingual education, and has done important work in the area of reading. He is the author of The Power of Reading. His recent papers can be found at http://www.sdkrashen.com.

    The Fundamentals: Second Language Acquisition

    This presentation will include an overview of second language acquisition, with a focus on the “Comprehension Hypothesis,” the hypothesis that we acquire language when we understand what we hear and what we read.  It will also include some of the important supporting evidence for the theory and application at the beginning level (Natural Approach, TPR, TPRS) and the intermediate level (sheltered subject matter teaching).

    Location:  San Francisco State University, Humanities Auditorium 133.

    Compensation: $100 stipend will be provided to School District teachers.

    Directions: map and directions available at http://www.sfsu.edu/~sfsumap/

    Contact Information:
    Fanny Li
    Program Coordinator
    STARTALK at SFSU
    415-338-7288
    stteach@sfsu.edu

  • Kindergartners learn quickly in Vancouver schools’ new Mandarin immersion program

    (and one of the best lede paragraphs I’ve seen on a story about Mandarin immersion)

    Teacher Hsin-yi Hu works with kindergarten students in Franklin Elementary’s first-year Chinese immersion program. She teaches Mandarin full-time to 24 pupils who will continue with her through first grade, while two more kindergarten sections are added next year.

    Photo by Steven Lane

    Teacher Hsin-yi Hu works with kindergarten students in Franklin Elementary’s first-year Chinese immersion program. She teaches Mandarin full-time to 24 pupils who will continue with her through first grade, while two more kindergarten sections are added next year.

    =========

    By Howard Buck

    Columbian staff writer Sunday, June 13, 2010 The Columbian

    Room 100 inside Benjamin Franklin Elementary School is full of characters.

    No, not quirky children.

    Rather, the walls and desks blanketed with images of pets, balloons, numbers, people and everyday objects, each labeled in Chinese script.

    And 24 kindergartners who laugh and learn as they spar with teacher Hsin-yi Hu in role play to stretch their vocabulary. Using colorful puppets, they growl as tigers or bark as dogs, always in character.

    Read more here.

  • Next Step for Fremont Immersion Program

    On June 9, 2010, the Fremont School Board unanimously passed a resolution authorizing staff to proceed with planning for a Chinese (Mandarin) Immersion Program (CIP) in Fall 2010, pending availability of privately raised funds. The vote was a major victory for parents and the community, who have been lobbying the Fremont Unified School District and Board for the past two years.

    There will be a parent information session on Tuesday, June 15 at Azevada Elementary School from 6-7 PM. The meeting will be a platform to answer questions, gauge interest and collect names for a lottery planned soonafter to determine children in the program.

    For more information, visit the Chinese Immersion Parents Council of Fremont.

  • Second Los Angeles Mandarin immersion elementary opens

    FROM Westside Today

    Broadway Elementary Offers Mandarin Immersion Program

    Broadway Elementary School (k-6) offers Mandarin Immersion Program this Fall 2010 with 2 Kindergarten Classes
    Broadway Elementary School in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has announced that it is launching an English-Mandarin Chinese dual-language immersion program starting in September 2010. Broadway Elementary School, located in Venice, serves 257 kindergarten-sixth grade students. It is the second dual English-Mandarin program to be offered in the LAUSD.

    “As China becomes a significant world influence, the goal of the pilot Mandarin immersion program is to create future generations who are competitive in the global work force,” said LAUSD Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines. “This program provides students with language skills in English and Mandarin, and prepares them for careers in the global market.”

    Broadway Elementary School began offering Mandarin instruction to all K-6 students using the FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary Schools) model in the 2009-2010 school year. Every student received Mandarin lessons for 30 minutes a day, four days a week. Currently, the District is working with the school to establish a pilot Mandarin immersion program for the 2010-2011 school year starting with a kindergarten program. It will serve students who are English speakers seeking to learn Mandarin, and Mandarin speakers seeking to learn English. English-speaking students and Mandarin-speaking students will serve as each other’s language models. As each class in the pilot immersion program moves into the next grade level, the program will recruit annually from the kindergarten level.

    read more here.