Chinese American International School (CAIS) is a private, independent
school in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. Founded in 1981,
with just ten students in the basement of a University of California
Extension building, CAIS is the earliest Mandarin-English dual-language
immersion school in the United States.
international school in Tianjin
The school now enrolls 520 students in grades pre-K through eight on
three campuses: early childhood, lower school, and middle school. CAIS
follows a 50/50 Chinese/English model in the early childhood and lower
school divisions and a 30/70 model in the middle school. Currently,
classes in grades pre-K through five are staffed by both a lead teacher
and a teaching associate. CAIS was a recipient of the Goldman Sachs
Award for Excellence for International Education in 2005.
CAIS employs full-time curriculum leaders in both English and
Chinese who work with teachers and teaching associates in all three
divisions on designing and delivering an integrated and aligned
curriculum in both languages. In the early childhood and lower school
divisions, and to a lesser degree in the middle school, the curriculum
is organized into integrated units, with all subjects and both languages
integrated under a unified theme.
Examples are “Exploring Living Things” (pre-K); “Everyone can make a
change/Helping Others is the Foundation of Happiness” (3rd grade); and
“Water, Water, Everywhere” (7th grade). CAIS’s curriculum framework
ensures integration across languages and subjects through six “Focuses
of Integration”—lenses through which all subjects can be viewed across
all grades. Inspired by the IB MYP (International Baccalaureate Middle
Years Programme) “Areas of Integration,” the CAIS “Focuses of
Integration” are Change and Continuity, Environments, Global
Citizenship, Self-Development, Culture, and Innovation and Creativity.
Subjects
In the early childhood and lower school divisions, students learn
language arts, social studies, math, and health in Chinese. Language
arts, social studies, math, lab science, and PE are taught in English,
and the visual and performing arts are taught in both languages, with
selection of language dependent on staffing. The school has dual
language social emotional learning programs both in the classroom and on
the playground.
In middle school, language arts and social studies and some arts classes are taught in Chinese.
CAIS employs a Chinese-speaking educational technology integrator
for all divisions, and technology skills are integrated directly into
the curriculum in all subjects in both Chinese and English. Coding and
design are separate classes taught in English.In CAIS’s play-based early
childhood program, the focus is on oral and aural proficiency within a
developmentally appropriate pre-literacy program.
In the lower school, CAIS is moving increasingly toward a workshop
model in both reading and writing that is aligned between Chinese and
English. In English the school has implemented reading and writing
workshop models from Teachers College at Columbia University, which have
been revised and adapted for the Chinese classroom. CAIS lower school
is also developing a guided reading program in Chinese, and the school
is currently working with a Bay Area publisher along with a few other
immersion schools to pilot a Chinese guided level reading system. CAIS
middle school is also moving to a workshop model in Chinese writing.
CAIS has long contemplated the relationship between language
learning objectives and content knowledge objectives within immersion
instruction. Accordingly, the school has developed a document entitled
“Goals and Principles of Chinese Immersion Instruction at CAIS,” which
defines clearly our approach to immersion instruction and the
relationship between language and content learning. Our curriculum maps
indicate both language objectives and content objectives for each
curriculum unit. The CAIS curriculum in Chinese is aligned with the
ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.
In 2012, CAIS changed from full-form or “traditional” Chinese
characters to simplified characters as the basic script for teaching and
learning in the Chinese language classroom. This transition took place
after 31 years of using the traditional, full-form script.
The Wall