Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

5Q Channel is a Mandarin reading web site based in Taiwan that was created to use computer animation to put classic Chinese stories into a form that kids would want to watch, listen to and read, all in Mandarin. Funded in part by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, it aims to give students all over the world access to the story-telling tradition of China in a cartoon animated format that modern children love – and helping them read Chinese while they’re at it.

Last week a group of parents and teachers from Starr King and Jose Ortega elementary schools met with the creators of 5Q Channel, as they were in town to present at the Chinese Education Conference in San Francisco.

Mr. Tseng Jr-Shi, the general manager for the company that created the site, Lu Feng Technology, gave us an introduction to what our kids could find there.

It’s pretty cool.  There are also over 350 individuals stories that students from Kindergarten on up will enjoy watching. The topics include everything from classic Chinese stories such as the Journey to the West and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to funny stories explaining the sometimes maddeningly confusing four-character sayings. These are part of any well-educated Chinese person’s daily speech, but you have to know the stories to know what they mean. I like that 5Q channel understood that kids wouldn’t know or care about classical allusions, so they’ve done cartoons illustrating them in modern settings.

Mostly it’s a closed site (no worries your child will click over into something you don’t want them seeing) where they can read along as they watch the story. You can set it for traditional or simplified characters, or English if you want to figure out what they’re looking at. The parents who attended the presentation were intrigued and of the 24 who’ve signed up so far, most report their kids are enjoying watching the cartoons – one more chance to tuck a little Mandarin-time into their day.

The Mandarin Immersion Parents Council negotiated a special yearly subscription price for the site, just $30 for one year. (We don’t make anything off it, we just liked it and offered to tell our parents about it.) However they’re only going to make it available for another two weeks. To sign up, click this link:

http://www.5qchannel.com/order/grouprate.htm

There aren’t many sites out there for Mandarin immersion students yet, so we were pleased to find this one, especially because they’re really going out of their way to make themselves useful to families where the kids read and speak Mandarin but the parents don’t. We’re sure more will be coming, but for now, this is a great place to let your kids play online and (many of us are thinking) a nice way to keep our kids’ Mandarin up during the summer months.

We’d love to hear more about how parents are using it, whether it’s helpful and what other resources you know of.

Beth

• This is coming out of the National Chinese Language Conference, happening this weekend in Washington D.C.
• Click here for the link.
• Journalists James Fallows of The Atlantic and John Pomfret of The Washington Post discuss the phenomenon that is China. Submit your questions!

Chinese Music & Arts
2010 Summer Day Camp
(For children ages from 7 to 14)
July 19 – August 27

Session I:   7/19~7/30 Chinese Classical
Music & Fine Art
Session II:  8/2~8/13 Chinese Folk Music &
Chinese Painting
Session III: 8/16~8/27 Chinese Pop Music &
Sketching
2010 Chinese Arts and Music Summer Camp is organized by a non-profit
organization Chinese Arts & Music Center (CAMC).  We offer three 2-week
summer programs for kids aged from 7 to 14. CAMC instructors will guide the
campers to have hands-on experience in Chinese music & fine arts. All kids will
experience the joy of working together, playing together and performing with friends for
the community.   Each Session has different focus field in music types and art forms
and will be conducted in Mandarin.

Space is limit, reserve your spot today!

Registration fee ($25/person) is waived for those who pay the deposits by June 1st, 2010.
Registration fee is also waived for ACE members, students from Starr King and Jose Ortega.
Morning extended care is available at $5/hr.
Snack will be provided, but not lunch.  Students have options to bring lunch or request the camp
to order lunch from a nearby restaurant.
We offer 10% discounts of tuition for deposit paid by 5/15.
Siblings, multiple sessions-students only pay registration for one person registration fee.

Camp Type: Day Camp 10 am ~ 4 pm
Cost Per Session: $260 (2 weeks)

CAMC instructors
Ms. Gangqin Zhao (Chinese music specialist) * Ms. Zheng Bao (Experienced professional in Fine Arts)

Camp Location: 500 Balboa Street (at 6th Ave.), San Francisco, CA 94118
For inquiries, call 415-666-3001 Or email to folkmelody@gmail.com
Harp (Guzheng), Dulcimar (Yangqin),Yueqin (Moon guitar), Hulusi (Wind gourd). Never played?
This is a fun and interactive jump-start. Experienced player? Study with the best local musicians
and perform in an ensemble. The 2-weeks session is a great introduction to Chinese Music into
young camper’s busy schedule.

2010国乐艺术夏令营
CAMC

Here’s a nice story in the Calgary Herald about families succeeding in maintaining their home languages. Here here!

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Matthew Singh jumps out of the car boiling over with excitement as he’s about to enter a large play area with a multitude of new toys. As he walks into the aptly named

Coffee and S’cream he jumps up and down, nearly bouncing off the walls with excitement. His one-year-old sister Milla stares at him with admiration. While his dad, Chad Singh, pays the $5.71 per child entrance fee, Matthew proclaims: “Ja chcem ice cream!” His mother, Christine Wielezynski Singh, looks down at her son and, in response to his half-Polish, half-English sentence, quickly quashes his demand for ice cream– lody in Polish–by answering him solely in her mother tongue. The translation: “Maybe later you can have ice cream at home.” The child nods and we follow him and his sister into the play area. Matthew hops into one of the plastic kid cars and starts zooming around, much to the chagrin of one of the owners of the N.W. cafe who, moments later, asks him to slow down. Singh goes up to his son and in a calm manner tells him in Hindi that he has to watch out for the other kids. Matthew nods again and continues on his way.

At three and a half years old, Matthew is trilingual. The couple uses a popular language-acquisition method called “one-parent-one-language,” in which the mother always speaks one language with the child while the father always speaks another, whether it’s English or, as in Matthew’s case, a third language.

Read more here.





From the website Blue Oregon

By Dave Porter of Portland, OR. Dave is a retired health administrator who advocates for Mandarin language education and study abroad programs in Oregon schools on his blog.

Sometimes seemingly small decisions have big repercussions. Such is Portland Public Schools annual decision not to expand its Mandarin immersion program at Woodstock Elementary School in SE Portland. Great powers can rise and fall on the accumulation of such seemingly small issues.

Each year for the past four years Portland Public Schools has been turning away at least another full class of kindergarten students whose parents want them to enter the Mandarin immersion program at Woodstock Elementary in SE Portland. The program currently takes only 60 new kindergarten students annually.

Here’s the data for the past four years:
2006-07: 60 openings, 109 applications;
2007-08: 60 openings, 106 applications;
2008-09: 60 openings, 89 applications;
2009-10: 60 openings, 84 applications meeting criteria, plus another 17 applications “criteria not met;” (which probably means the parents missed a required meeting).

read more here.