Reply to Start immersion if unlikely to stick with it? And related lottery question.

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Start immersion if unlikely to stick with it? And related lottery question."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry to detour but can PP please speak to potential reasons immersion would inhibit other learning?[/quote]

Not PP, but an immersion parent. Because preschoolers would be learning the foundational academic skills in a language they don’t already know. If it’s 50/50 immersion, they’ll focus on the learning during the English time and only on Spanish during the Spanish time. If it’s 90/10 and they’re starting from scratch, they’ll be focused on getting to basic comprehension and will miss other instruction. Same into elementary school. If they’re not proficient to fluent already, they’ll have to split their attention between the language and the actual material being taught. Some kids are naturals with languages and it’s NBD, or good students and don’t need a ton of instruction to master the material. But some kids struggle and eventually get frustrated and resistant with the second language.[/quote]

+1.  Immersion parent here too.  Some subjects are taught in the language and if kids struggle with the language then they are going to not understand some of the material being taught.

As you get into the upper grades, there is much higher expectations in the language, at least at our charter, and these kids who are behind struggle even more.  This is when some families, with kids like this, will pull their kid out of immersion because it’s just too hard.

Also, if your kid is struggling with math or English then that’s a problem and if this was my kid, I would pull him out of immersion too.  Kids get 50% less ELA than traditional school and if they can’t master the critical basic crucial subjects such as math and English, I would not add another challenge with language on top of it.
[/quote]

FWIW, I just ended up teaching my kid math and writing at home. Found an awesome math curriculum I like much more than the common core (Beast Academy/AoPS). Kid is six years in to the program and eventually the second language clicked. He’s still behind his peers in the program, but I don’t care. He’s close to fluent! And he’s testing high in math and ELA, but that’s because we work at them a lot at home. I probably won’t have him take the AP class/test in 9th grade with his peers and instead drop back a year, because why not? AP in 10th grade is still grade. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that there have been struggles along the way, but I’m still glad we did the program. And to OP, several kids have dropped out along the way for various reasons, so that is no big deal. [/quote]

That’s great for your child but you are basically homeschooling your child in math and and English after a full day at school.  That’s a big commitment for 6 years that realistically most families do not have the time or bandwidth to do this.

It is also kid dependent.  Some kids are not going to be cooperative to doing so much outside of school in their free time.[/quote]

+1 on all of this.  We left immersion because of this.  We anticipated supplementing the language, but didn't anticipate the amount of supplementing we'd have to do in the basics (reading, writing, math).[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics