Bilingual immersion school—stay or go?

My daughter is in first grade in a 50/50 immersion program. She had minimal exposure to Spanish before K. She’s doing well with reading and writing in English and math. But recently her grades in Spanish have gone down (and they were not great to begin with). For the first time her Spanish teacher expressed concern that she might start falling behind in the subjects that are taught in Spanish (e.g. math) as the material gets more difficult if her language doesn’t pick up. My daughter  was recently in a small tutoring group to try to help the students who are struggling with Spanish and she was very distracted and not at all interested. She didn’t retain much of what was taught. I’ve simultaneously been pursuing testing for ADHD. There is also a lot of homework at this grade level, which is a major struggle to complete. My daughter likes the school and her teachers and doesn’t want to change, but she gets very frustrated and then won’t try to work on Spanish, even simple things. I’m wondering if we should transfer schools now or give it more time. (I’m single and work full time  so we have limited time and resources to work with too.) I’d love to hear from parents whose kids struggled in immersion programs, particularly those with kids with ADHD.

 Thanks!

Parent Replies

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It sounds like your child is not receiving the instruction she needs at her school.  If there is a large enough group of kids struggling with this that they have a tutoring group, the school really needs to rethink their instruction methods, not blame it on the kids.  This is why many immersion schools do 90% Spanish in kinder, and 80% in first.  I would consider switching to one of those schools.  

My son is in a Chinese immersion school, he is not a classic ADHD but has hard time to focus. The ADHD assessments will give you a good idea what to do next. Maybe there is a way for the school to accommodate their instructions to your child needs according to the neuropsychologist recommendations? Make sure the school can support her needs (we have a learning plan for our child).

It seems a low English/Spanish ratio for that age.

What about 1:1 tutoring?