Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Discussion Session (1 hour)

Chinese

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion

“How did you come up with that solution?” “Can you show me your thinking?” These are the questions we often ask our second graders in our Mandarin immersion Math class. In the Cognitive Guided Instruction (CGI) approach, the teacher uses story problems to introduce a topic to encourage students to think and use any tools they want to explain their understanding of concepts using the target language.  In this learning environment, it not only builds children's natural problem-solving strategies, but also improves immersion students’ target language development by challenging them to express, orally and in writing, complex thinking using vocabulary and structures that are embedded in the lesson. In this presentation, two second grade Mandarin immersion teachers will demonstrate a series of activities/class assignments that have been using to achieve students' mathematical content learning goals as well as to develop their communicative language skills through lessons designed to integrate language and content.