High schools (or at least BCC) do foreign exchanges for certain languages.

No trip to China (unless it is new this year)

Do they have a class trip to China? If so, in which grade? TIA.

"years ago" could be 3 years ago, right?

My child is at CGES now in an upper grade. CI has about 42 students in 4th and 5th grade now. They are not combining classes.

Chinse Immersion is new ish at College Gardens (started in maybe 2006) so there is nothing about the program (especially the older grades which were phased in) that happened years ago.

My child is in MS school now so I don't know about this year..but in almost all the years my kids were at CGES the 4th and 5th classes were very small/combined.

Anonymous wrote:Many immersion students are there because they were trying to avoid their neighborhood schools more than the immersion opportunity. At College Gardens the 4th and 5th grade Chinese classes are combined into 1 class since so many kids have left.

Maybe that was the case years ago, but it is definitely not the case this year.

Several kids went from DC's immersion school to HGCs. Other bright kids didn't bother to test for HGCs because language was the priority.

Re the loss of English language skills, PP's are right to say that, to the extent this happens, it wouldn't affect the HGC test results very much (and if it doesn affect verbal scores, the HGC panels will realize the kid is in immersion). In any case, my understanding is that English language skills do lag for a few years, but immersion kids are actually better in English by middle school.

Anonymous wrote:Immersion kids apply to HGCs just like other kids do...if they get in and accept, one problem is that they can no longer return to the immersion program in middle school, after being out for 2 years.

Actually, if they maintain their language skills enough to test back in, they can return to immersion at the middle school.

Anonymous wrote:My kid went from immersion to HGC. The testing doesn't really revolve around skills that an immersion kid would lack.

It is true that they lose their language skills, so you have to be prepared for a tradeoff.

Agree. Both of our immersion kids went to HGCs. Worth the trade off to us and them.

My kid went from immersion to HGC. The testing doesn't really revolve around skills that an immersion kid would lack.

It is true that they lose their language skills, so you have to be prepared for a tradeoff.

Immersion kids apply to HGCs just like other kids do...if they get in and accept, one problem is that they can no longer return to the immersion program in middle school, after being out for 2 years.

Many immersion students are there because they were trying to avoid their neighborhood schools more than the immersion opportunity. At College Gardens the 4th and 5th grade Chinese classes are combined into 1 class since so many kids have left.

Do many immersion kids even apply? I thought the purpose of immersion programs was to develop a strong fluency in a language. Seems like the longer you're in, the better. Why would they try to bail after 3rd grade?

What is the track record for kids getting into HGC coming from the immersion schools? Is it the same as the non-immersion kids at their home schools? Seems like their testing skills could lag behind their English medium counterparts, and it is already so hard for kids to get in.