FCPS Immersion Program efficacy

[Anonymous]

I feel like there is info online as to what level our children should have achieved by the end of 6th grade at a FCPS immersion school, I didn’t see it.

What are people seeing at their schools? Do you feel like your child has picked up the target language?

[Anonymous]

They don’t. Or an extremely low percentage do.

[Anonymous]

I work at a Title 1 school. When students come in from Central America with no English, what classroom do you think they’re put into? The Spanish immersion classroom or the English speaking classroom? You guessed it, Spanish immersion.

At the school, I work at it is less an immersion program and more of a bridge for ELL students.

[Anonymous]

They should be proficient for kids it's not hard - I grew up where being tri or quad lingual is normal. I saw youtube videos from other school districts - they seem proficient.

I got excited in the beginning and now disappointed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at a Title 1 school. When students come in from Central America with no English, what classroom do you think they’re put into? The Spanish immersion classroom or the English speaking classroom? You guessed it, Spanish immersion.

At the school, I work at it is less an immersion program and more of a bridge for ELL students.

Glad we didn't give up AAP for language immersion. I would have been livid if this was happening in our school.

[Anonymous]

Not quite sure yet. DD is finishing up 3rd grade. They are allowed to use Google translate in class so I don't think that is super helpful. She can understand spoken pretty well, not very confident in speaking to have a conversation. We only speak English at home so only exposure is at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not quite sure yet. DD is finishing up 3rd grade. They are allowed to use Google translate in class so I don't think that is super helpful. She can understand spoken pretty well, not very confident in speaking to have a conversation. We only speak English at home so only exposure is at school.

In the classroom, they are listening to the teacher who is speaking the language while teaching, but their opportunities to reply, or have a back and forth conversation are somewhat limited.

[Anonymous]

They are not learning the language. They do learn some vocab.

[Anonymous]

It’s not worth it

[Anonymous]

Depends on the work they put into it. Quite a few kids are doing extra language work on the weekends.

[Anonymous]

My kids can understand a heck of a lot of the target language. Their speaking didn’t get very good until middle school though. We went into it knowing they were getting more exposure than they would otherwise, and don’t expect fluency. They all have great accents when they do speak, and are thrilled at the idea of visit g places where the language is spoken.
I see it as a holistic experience- not just a chance to be fluent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids can understand a heck of a lot of the target language. Their speaking didn’t get very good until middle school though. We went into it knowing they were getting more exposure than they would otherwise, and don’t expect fluency. They all have great accents when they do speak, and are thrilled at the idea of visit g places where the language is spoken.
I see it as a holistic experience- not just a chance to be fluent

Sounds like a "nice to have" program that is not worth the dollars spent by FCPS.

[Anonymous]

We started in FCPS immersion K and 1st, and moved to full immersion in another state for 2nd (and K for our youngest). Massive difference. Full immersion works, and even though our kids left in 4th and 6th to move overseas, they are now in advanced Spanish HS classes and scored very high on the Avant language assessments last month. We are glad we had the partial option, as it's better than nothing, but it's really not comparable to full immersion.

[Anonymous]

I don’t speak the language but DS seems to have learned enough that Japanese in 7th grade required some effort but was not super hard for him. The kids entered MS Japanese knowing the alphabets, or at least with a strong level of familiarity, and a good amount of basic vocabulary. More importantly, it was a class he had to work on in ES and MS, it was a challenge for him. We deferred LIV for the language and are happy with our choice.

The informational meeting we attended back in K flat out said that the kids would not be fluent in the language at the end of ES. They clearly said in our session that they don’t focus on the grammar in the ES program, that came in MS. The program was more about introducing the language in the same way the kids learned English at home before school. They heard it being used, learned the sounds and words in context, and learned how th write the alphabets and basic words and the like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like there is info online as to what level our children should have achieved by the end of 6th grade at a FCPS immersion school, I didn’t see it.

What are people seeing at their schools? Do you feel like your child has picked up the target language?

Immersion is NOT about acquiring language fluency. It is about brain development. My kids were in it. One went to AAP — big mistake. Immersion was FAR SUPERIOR.

The DC who did two-way immersion from k to 11th grade (he just finished 11th). He stayed with to Spanish AP this year. School wanted him to apply for the Governors School program this year bc they think he had a good shot (large Hispanic community here) he didn’t want to go. We do not speak Spanish at home. He’s fluent but shy about speaking it. He definitely understood more than he could speak by 4th grade, not bad for 2 hours a day of target language. Pretty sure he was the only one from his immersion class to continue straight through with the language and finish the entire sequence.

Immersion will not make your kid fluent, but will give them enough brain pathways to make language and other subjects easier to access.