Chesterbrook Elem students learning Chinese

Students at Chesterbrook Elementary School are learning to speak Chinese.

The program – Foreign Language in Elementary School (FLES) – began three years ago for first and second graders and is expanding as students move to the next grade.

This year, first-, second-, third- and fourth-graders have a half-hour lesson, twice a week from a full-time Chinese teacher at Chesterbrook, learning to speak the language and discovering China and its culture. The program will expand to fifth-graders next year, when they also will be introduced to calligraphy.

“The class is taught purely in Chinese, no English is spoken,” said Chesterbrook Principal Robert Fuqua.

The students learn colors and numbers in Chinese. By third grade, students are learning to write Chinese – a challenging task for any student.

There’s never a day without Chinese at Chesterbrook, Fuqua says. There’s a minute in Chinese every day during the morning news show – with a cast that uses puppets and writes a story line.

“The students are not going to be fluent yet, but research tells us that if children do it early enough in life, they will be able to have that skill,” he said.

“The kids are getting a great exposure,” added Jeannine Bottorff, mother of a third-grader. “I don’t how much they will retain, but just to have this kind of exposure opens your mind when you are young and changes you.”

A recent ABC news report by Diane Sawyer showed how in China, students start learning English when they are five, becoming fluent by the time they are 10 years old.

Jeannine’s daughter, Delaney, 9, likes “learning a new language.”

She has conversations with her classmates and knows the Chinese words for the colors, hello and good bye, yes and no, watermelon, pear and apple.

Chesterbrook’s Chinese teacher, Annie Shou, is a native speaker, Fuqua said.

Seven other Fairfax County elementary schools are teaching Chinese, too – Mount Vernon Woods, Clermont, Fairview, Fair Hill, Oak Hill, Providence and Wolf Trap.

Link to site about the program and schools
http://www.fcps.edu/DIS/OHSICS/forlang/fles/index.htm

Chesterbrook’s Time for Chinese is now a podcast on iTunes.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/time-for-chinese-ces/id400471552

“Chesterbrook is good at getting out there and trying things. It’s good they tried to do something a little different with Chinese,” Jeannine Bottorff said.