Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School provides a world-class education for elementary school students in our nation’s capital–free of charge. Our school’s powerful education model combines an effective Chinese language immersion program with the inquiry-based curricula of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme.

Employing an Effective Chinese Immersion Program

Research indicates that to gain fluency in a new language, students must spend significant time in an environment saturated in that new language.

WashingtonYuYing_005At Yu Ying, we do not offer “Chinese class.” Instead, we immerse students within a rich Chinese environment so that they learn how to speak, read, and write in Chinese.  Most of our students learn under our 50/50 immersion model, where students learn all subjects in both Chinese and English.  To achieve an optimal Chinese immersion environment, we keep our class sizes small, hire excellent native-speaking Chinese teachers, and use effective teaching methods.

Our Chinese immersion model also relies heavily on “teaching teams,” with the teacher in the English classroom and the teacher in the Chinese classroom working very closely every day to ensure students are continuously learning core content in both Chinese and English.  Because teacher collaboration and professional development are critical to our immersion model, students are dismissed early on Fridays to allow allows teaching teams time to collaborate, learn, and grow.

Our Chinese mission statement is to educate students who are passionate about communicating in Chinese in an authentic environment while using the three modes of communication in a culturally appropriate way that allows them to be independent problem solvers in order to navigate in a Chinese world.

Applying the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme framework