Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Georgia school with Mandarin immersion doing well

    Fulton schools hope to profit from teaching Mandarin

    By Will Robinson

     

    Posted: 12:00 a.m. Tuesday, February 28, 2017

    Oakley Elementary School does not just teach students Mandarin, it teaches them in Mandarin. A hundred students spend half the day learning math and science in Mandarin and the other half learning reading, writing and social studies in English.

    Mandarin classes, taught by Yipeng Wang, are the best part of the day for Kailey Gillespie, 6.

    “My favorite thing is counting,” said Gillespie, who can count in Mandarin into the hundreds.

    Wang uses various technologies in his classroom, including iPads, a smart board and even augmented reality software (think Pokemon Go) to help his students. Technology enables students to create word associations without using English. For example in one classroom activity, students pointed an iPad camera at the Mandarin word for “square,” and a square appeared on screen, creating the link in their minds between the Mandarin word and the shape without an English word acting as a middleman.

    “When you give (students) technology, it makes learning more fun,” Wang said. “A lot of students are thinking they’re playing a game, which is what we want them to believe.”

    Please read more here.

  • Mandarin immersion brings families to Lansing, Mich. public schools

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    From The Lansing State Journal

    ,

    LANSING – Putting aside the remnants of their breakfasts, the students inside Room 128 of Lansing’s Post Oak Academy formed a circle around their teacher, Yu Qiu.

    If the group of fourth-graders was feeling the Monday blues, they weren’t showing it. Several sprang from their chairs, eager to join in on the morning name game.

    Qiu scanned the students gathered around her and slowly crept toward Morgan McKissack.

    Before Qiu could get there, Morgan shouted the name of another student in the circle. Qiu turned and trained on her new target.

    Wensen Pei fumbled his words. Qiu tagged him. The youngster replaced his teacher in the center of the circle.

    Getting her students to use the Mandarin pronunciation of their peers’ names was the goal. It’s the first step to getting them to converse in the language they use for half the school day but seldom speak at home.

    Please read more here.

  • Kansas’ only Mandarin immersion program off to a strong start in a new building

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    BY KATY BERGEN

    kbergen@kcstar.com

    OCTOBER 26, 2017 11:39 AM

    On a recent morning in Overland Park, Kan., at a school next to a horse pasture in the middle of the country, a kindergartener raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom — in Mandarin Chinese.

    Students sang a Chinese song about family as teacher Claire Pan, a native of Taiwan, pointed to corresponding characters. Later, when Pan gave instructions for a craft project, a young girl spoke quietly to her classmates at a table.

    “That means whisper,” she says.

    Please read more here.

  • A nice piece from a 6th-grade teacher about her classroom

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    STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED MANDARIN LEARNING

    Jamie C.H. Gao

    Jamie C.H. Gao

    Mandarin Lead Teacher for Middle School and PBL Lead at Yuming Charter School

    FROM THE “BEST” CHINESE BOOKS TO STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED MANDARIN LEARNING IN MY CLASSROOM

    by Jamie Chiahui Gao

    “How can I encourage my children to read more Chinese books? What are the best Chinese books for my children to read?” Both parents and Chinese teachers are eager to find answers to these questions. As a seasoned Mandarin teacher with experience teaching from the East Coast to the West Coast, from teaching preschool to college students, these are questions I continue to encounter daily. My replies vary over the years, owing to my growth and development as a teacher.

    I am continually pondering and experimenting with authentic methods to motivate students in my Mandarin classroom. How can I disassociate Mandarin learning from rote memorization and busy work, such as the mindless filling in of worksheets? Most importantly, how can I make Mandarin learning connected with students’ current lives, in real-world settings, to provoke meaningful investigation?

    From years of teaching and developing Mandarin curriculum under both World Language and Immersion models, I have found student-centered, project-based language learning to be effective among students with age as young as two and half-year-old. On top of the many benefits of Project-Based Learning (PBL), I have my ultimate goal in mind while in the classroom – to implement language learning.

    Please see more here.

  • Reading is even more fundamental in Chinese…

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    You all know I’m a huge proponent of reading for pleasure as a way to build vocabulary, gain a better grasp of academic language and just generally become a more educated human being. And that goes for Chinese, too.

    Some researchers who look at reading for pleasure (and please, note the pleasure part of this. If it ain’t fun, it ain’t happening!) recently published a book on this. I highly recommend it. And it comes in simplified and traditional Chinese as well. If there isn’t enough reading going on in your child’s classroom, get a copy in the appropriate characters and give it to your child’s teacher…

    Dr. Christy Lao from San Francisco State University, Dr. Stephen Krashen and Dr. Sy-Ying Lee from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology have just published a book titled Comprehensible and Compelling – The Causes and Effects of Free Voluntary Reading. The traditional Chinese character version titled “自主阅读” is published by Commonwealth亲子天下出版社 in Taiwan, the simplified Chinese character version will be published by XinJiang Juvenile Publishing House 新疆少年儿童出版社in China. 

  • Ship your kids to China for the summer….

    I don’t have personal experience with this school but it sounds like a fair number of families from immersion programs have sent their kids.

    They’re holding information sessions in San Francisco and Palo Alto next month, but you can also just check out their website. Or click the link below, which goes to a full brochure about the program.

    China High School Programme 2017-2018

    Palo Alto Info Session PosterSF Info Session Poster

  • Orange Co. Mandarin immersion reaches middle school

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    Mandarin language immersion debuts at Mission Viejo middle school

    By | snewell@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise
    PUBLISHED:

    At first glance, this sixth-grade classroom at Newhart Middle School looks normal with its clustered desks, hand-drawn posters and teacher standing at the front of the classroom.

    A closer look and listen, however, reveals something entirely different.

    Newhart has become the first middle school in the Capistrano Unified School District to offer a Mandarin immersion program, in which students take two courses — one on the Mandarin language, another on social studies — taught entirely in the foreign language.

    The 30-student program kicked off at Newhart in August with students who took years of Mandarin immersion at Marian Bergeson Elementary School in Laguna Niguel.

    Inside the classroom, students converse, ask questions and respond to teacher Letitia Endow in Mandarin.

    “I want Chinese to come to them like second nature,” Endow said.

    The Mission Viejo instructor taught Mandarin as a foreign language for six years before coming to Newhart and teaching immersion for the first time.

    Please read more here.