Northern Hills Middle School
Northern Hills Middle School students focus on oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and listening comprehension.
Forest Hills Northern Middle School
FHPS Mandarin Chinese Immersion Program
7 / 8 students receive 77+ minutes of Mandarin instructional time.
As students prepare for middle school, it is important to understand the workload and expectations of what will be involved for students to continue on their Chinese immersion journey in high school. The middle school years are essential to preparing our students to meet the admissions requirements and rigors of the WMU program. The 8th grade Chinese class is especially important, since student’s grade will be counted as high school credit and a factor in their acceptance into the WMU/FHN college program.
Forest Hills Northern Middle School
Principal: Dr. David Simpson
7th & 8th Grade Teacher: Wang Laoshi
The 7th and 8th grade curriculum is centered around four themes throughout the school year. The four themes in 7th grade are Education, Food & Health, Family, Travel. The four themes of 8th grade are After school activities & Clubs, Community, Movie and Music, Technology.
Students’ effort and diligence in class work, and perseverance overcoming challenges is a foundation for their success in the college program.
Class Expectations
From Wang Lǎoshī, Teacher
- Have fun
- Work hard in class and at home. Take responsibility for your own learning.
- Not only memorize WHAT, but also think WHY
- Establish good learning habits to serve future learning
- Speaking Chinese all the time in class and as much as possible outside of the classroom
- Feel supported and cared for
- Finish work on time
7th Grade Objectives
From Wang Lǎoshī
7th & 8th Grade Teacher
- Gain a deep understanding of Chinese language and culture through authentic literature and informational media
- Acquire language through experiences with the 5 C’s of foreign language learning (communications, culture, comparisons. connections & community )
- Improve Chinese language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing
- Expand and Reinforce Vocabulary recognition through Literature study (reading and writing )
- Engage in various discussions to improve higher order thinking skills and language skills.
8th Grade Objectives
- Review and implement the writing process through specific assignments and projects
- Be active readers both inside and outside of the classroom through the study of a variety of literature including the short story, the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and myths and legends.
- Grammatical study emphasizing parts of speech, sentence structure, and punctuation, with specific attention to reviewing areas of need that will be assessed through many speaking and writing activities.
- Practice creative and critical thinking through a variety of classroom activities including writing, analyzing, discussing, debating, role-playing and making group project
- Find the connection between the characters that students learned previously and new characters.
- Infer the meaning of some new words according to the character or word knowledge they learned before.
High School Dual Enrollment
Chinese Immersion Dual Enrollment partnership with Western Michigan University
Application to this program is available to Chinese immersion students at FHN High School only. Admission to the program is determined by the WMU Admissions Office based on the following requirements established by the WMU’s Admissions Office for this program:
- High School GPA of at least 3.00. For incoming 9th grade students, this GPA is taken from their 8th grade Chinese Immersion class semester grades and other high school courses (i.e. Algebra), if applicable
- Qualifying score on the WMU Chinese language assessment
- Permission from parent/guardian
