In 1997 Huntingdale Primary School was chosen by the Victorian Department of Employment, Education and Training to be one of three trial schools to offer Japanese language education in an immersion program.

Since then the program has developed strongly – Huntingdale Primary is now regarded as a leader in Japanese education offering exemplary and innovative programs.

The implementation and development of the Immersion Japanese program at Huntingdale Primary School has been very successful with the whole community strongly supporting the positive outcomes evident in students’ learning.

All students at Huntingdale Primary School receive at least 7.5 hours of classes a week in Japanese. As well as language classes, Music, Art, Sport, SOSE and Science are taught in Japanese by native speaking teachers. This is also supported by Japanese speaking classroom teachers and a Japanese assistant.

Students’ language skills and cultural understandings continue to be extended to advanced levels through the bilingual program.

By integrating content areas through creating meaningful situations based on a communicative approach in a partial-immersion context, students have the opportunity to maximise their learning of language and content.

Students do continue to achieve success in all areas of the curriculum. The Literacy and Numeracy standards, particularly in the lower school showed marked improvement compared with prior to the implementation of the bilingual program.

The planning and evaluation procedures in place ensure our program is delivered effectively, in line with the Victorian CSF curriculum guidelines.

Learning technologies are a key element of the Japanese bilingual program at Huntingdale Primary School. The use of multimedia and other learning technologies is a strong focus in our programming.

In 1999, we received a grant to expand our hardware and learning technologies capabilities - this has resulted in stronger application of learning technologies to support the immersion programme.

A key element of the bilingual program is the bi-annual exchange program with our sister school in Inami, Japan. Every year, students and staff from Otaki Junior High School visit Huntingdale Primary. Every second year, Year 5 and 6 students and a number of staff from Huntingdale visit Otaki Junior High School for a week. The trip provides the Huntingdale School community with an excellent opportunity to enhance cultural understandings and gives students a meaningful and exciting opportunity to develop their language skills further. See more photos from our Japan Trips.

The Japanese immersion programme at Huntingdale Primary School offers other language teachers and educators the opportunity to observe and evaluate the success of this innovative language learning approach.

If you would like to visit the bilingual program, please download the
Visitor Application Form and email it to the Bilingual Program Co-ordinator,
Kylie Farmer – email: farmer.kylie.f@edumail.vic.gov.au