ACIE Newsletter Features

The Bridge: From Research to Practice

Educational research is vital to validating effective practices, challenging ineffective ones, and encouraging innovations. Yet research is only valuable if teachers read and implement findings in their classrooms.

The Bridge feature is included as an insert to encourage teachers to collect them for future reference. We hope this pull-out insert will help immersion teachers stay abreast of the latest research and allow it, when applicable, to affect their own practice.

Best Practices

Sharing ideas that work is the emphasis of this regular feature. Program administrators can learn about school-wide initiatives that promote immersion principles. Classroom teachers can read about tried and true, practical instructional techniques that they might adopt for their classrooms.

Immersion ABCs

If we peel back the layers that currently envelop immersion schools, what might we find at the core? In this column we will share with readers basic principles behind successful immersion programs, and show how challenges have been met at the classroom, school, and district level.

Points for Parents

Parents often are looking for a place to access ideas about how to support their children’s education. Immersion parents who may or may not be fluent in the language their child is learning at school have many questions and concerns.

In this regular feature, we offer concrete suggestions for extracurricular support of language learning. In addition, we address specific parent concerns and invite parents to share their experience and expertise.

School Profiles

There has been dramatic growth in the number of immersion programs during the last decade. More and more communities have chosen to support this educational option, whose benefits to students are well documented. In this feature we spotlight immersion schools and explore factors that make each one unique.

Research Reports

In an effort to push the edge of what we currently know about learning, researchers continue to design and publish new studies on issues important to immersion education. Keeping up to date with current research is a time-consuming task.

This regular feature will help inform the immersion education public about recent research by providing our readers with brief summaries of selected studies.

Guest Editorials

This features provides anyone interested in immersion education with an opportunity to voice your thoughts and concerns.

Techno Tips

Technology and second language education are a natural match, as both enable us to explore our world more directly. In this column, Techno Tips and Trips, we highlight successful applications of technology in and around the immersion classroom.