By Yibo Lu and the team from Avenues

1. Avenues World School
Chinese Immersion Program
Angela Xu - Chinese Immersion Coordinator
Yibo Lu - Chinese Literacy Specialist
Jenny Guo - Head Teacher Grade 1
Ying Tso - Head Teacher Grade 2
Yingwen Chen - Head Teacher Grade 3

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7. 1st grade daily schedule 3rd grade daily schedule

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10. ● 世界课
食物
房子
水
中餐
西餐
中国菜和美
国菜有什么
一样，又有什
么不一样？
食物从哪里来？
动植物
地方
餐具
地理 I
（五大洋、
七大洲）
地理 II
（旅游、各地
文化）

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10+0

12. Assessment & Book Project

13. - Assessment: Listening & Speaking, Reading, Writing:
3 times a year (except for writing: twice a year)
Listening & Speaking: Answer questions (interview)
● Level 1 - 6: k - 5th grade (124 questions)
● Difficulties spiral up
Reading: (1) Read books aloud and answer comprehension questions
(2) Character recognition (high frequency words)
● Read two books with an accuracy above 95%, comprehension 4
and fluency 2
● Level 1 - 6: k - 5th grade (500 words)
● Difficulties spiral up
Assessment

14. Assessment Listening & Speaking Samples

15. Assessment Character Recognition Samples

16. Book Project
Why did we start to create books?
- lack of resources designed for immersion setting
and books with levels, especially for assessment
How does it work?
- Combine existing western system (F&P) + the uniqueness of Chinese language
What makes our book project unique?
- Writing, Illustrating & Editing team: composed of teachers ALL from Avenues

17. Book Project
What makes our book project unique?
Writing:
- Genres/topics: fiction, nonfiction and world course topics
- Difficulties spiral up
- Culture awareness
- Extra support for more target learners

18. Book Project
What makes our book project unique?
Illustrating:
- various ways to present images
● Photos 《我喜欢动物》
● Watercolor 《看和听》
● Computer 《我的玩具》
● Paper cutting & crayons 《天气》
● White-out 《星星》

19. Book Project
What makes our book project unique?
Editing:
- In-design
- Running records: adding taking-note part

20. Students’ Improvement

21. First Grade Pinyin Project

22. Why did we decide to have the pinyin project?
- lack of data to show when it is the best time to introduce pinyin in Chinese
immersion programs
- no research has shown if learning pinyin will delay students’ progress in learning
Chinese characters
-no research has shown if learning pinyin will confuse students in terms of English
letters learning

23. Database: 4 classes in 1st grade, 73 students
Pinyin groups VS Non-pinyin groups
4 phases (pinyin groups):
Phase 1: introduce pinyin letters
Phase 2: introduce vocabulary in pinyin
Phase 3: read sentences and stories
Phase 4: Chinese characters + pinyin
How does it work?

24. Learning Pinyin will
● Increase the accuracy of tones
● Increase the accuracy of reading
● Increase the fluency of writing
Hypothesis

25. pinyin VS characters

28. Assessments
● Listening & Speaking
● Reading & writing

29. Results & Future research
● We will continue this pinyin project
next school year (2017-2018) in
order to increase our database.

30. http://www.avenues.org/en/careers/
Chinese Opening Positions:
● Head Teacher - Chinese (Grades 1-5)
● Associate Teacher - Kindergarten
● Avenues Interim Masters - Chinese
Wechat: Avenues2012

31. Q & A

32. Thank you !