Chinese Immersion

What is Dual Immersion?

Dual immersion is the blending of academic learning and language acquisition. Dual language immersion offers a rich bilingual experience for young learners when their minds are developmentally best able to acquire a second language.  Instruction is divided between two high quality creative classrooms: one English and one Chinese.

Students will enjoy the advantage of two caring, qualified teachers. The English-speaking teacher uses half of the instruction time to teach science and English language arts (reading, writing, and spelling).  The Chinese-speaking teacher uses the other half of the day to teach math, social studies, and health topics from the grade appropriate level of the USOE core curriculum.  The Chinese/English dual language immersion program will expand one grade each year to eventually offer K-6 immersion for interested students.

Goals of the dual immersion program:
The primary goal of the program is to provide students the opportunity to become bi-lingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural, as well as to prepare them to meet the challenges of a global community in the 21st Century. Furthermore, students will attain an academic achievement that is at or above grade level as measured by myDSD or SAGE testing.

Application for the dual immersion program:
Applications will be available at the parent orientation meeting in February/March of each year. Watch for upcoming information.

Selection process:
School and district personnel will determine the number of spaces that will be available for students enrolled at each school. Out of boundary students will only be considered on a space-available basis. In most instances, students living within the school boundaries will be given priority unless a decrease in school-wide enrollment becomes a factor. Siblings of students already enrolled in the program will also be given priority placement. If applications exceed space, a lottery will be held to determine placement in the program. Students with prior Chinese Immersion experience or cultural Chinese language heritage will also receive priority placement.  This placement will be contingent on a simple Chinese language assessment given by the school to assure the student’s skills are similar to peers who have been participating in the Chinese Immersion program.  Please contact the school directly for the date by which applications need to be submitted.