Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments French Immersion v. English Stream

My son, my first and only child, has just turned 2. We have had no formal testing done for giftedness, nor do we intend on doing any anytime soon, but I'm pretty sure he's at least on the giftedness scale somewhere, probably somewhere in the middle. Already I'm thinking about schooling and what we're going to do with him when we have to register him for something in 2 years' time.

Basically, we can do the English stream and if he keeps progressing as he has been, hope for some sort of accelerated work to keep him challenged. OR we can put him in Early French Immersion and hope that that alone is enough of a challenge (which I doubt) and kiss goodbye the hope of having any sort of accelerated program for him. My understanding to date is that it's hard enough to get any accommodations made for gifted kids in the English stream, and that to expect as much in French Immersion is ridiculous.

We do have a choice of sending him to one of two different schools, so I do have some options.

Any comments or suggestions on this?? Anyone had to go through anything similar?

Hi kalhuli,

We are on similar paths but insert Spanish for French and that's us. Though we didn't choose the French route my BF's daughter did go through a French Immersion program and I have talked to her a few times in reference to acceleration. According to her the child can be accelerated and the school her daughter was going to will not pigeon hold them in a class strictly on age BUT her daughter was never accelerated while attending this program and her daughter is PG. There are other circumstances there: the child went through serious depression and left the school on the advisement of a therapist who thought she would be better off in a public school. When they made this transition her world really crumbled and she spent the next two years in a ball. She is better now but we have learned to look at the day to day and not put the pressure of the future on her shoulders.

And again ... my BF's DD issues were not really a reflection on the program itself but more internal. After her hard road back she has stayed in contact and is still close friends with her old classmates from the French Immersion program.

Our Spanish Immersion program is open to acceleration and promises to test DD when she has shown mastery of Spanish. So we will see. Right now DD is still challenged with the school because it is all in Spanish but she isn't that far off from fluency and once that happens we have to consider that her work load which is 2 years ahead of typical school grades is still not enough of an advancement for DD. Hoping the school keeps their end of the deal.

But also I wanted to offer that just because the school is a French Immersion doesn't mean they are the same across the board. We have a few immersion programs in our city and one is a montessori french immersion program which I found to be unique. The best thing for you to do is go in and talk to them. Ask the questions and see if acceleration is an option.

Yes, it depends on where you are. My son did a French immersion program in a school that followed the curriculum of France. They offered to let him skip 3rd grade, and a boy in his class had skipped 1st. We know a guy from France who skipped two grades, and according to him, it's better accepted there than it is in the US.

I don't know about Canada. What are both school's acceleration policies?

An immersion program gives a gifted child a challenge during the early years of school (provided he doesn't already know the second language), and, of course, learning to speak a second language at such a young age is a gift itself.


Val

Another thought is, immersion doesn't have to be permanent. Even a year or so of exposure to a foreign language at a young age will give them a huge leg up on re-learning that language later, even if they appear to forget it all. For that matter, it will probably help with learning any addition language. So you could do immersion for a while, then switch. (Unless switching is really difficult to do in your system.)