Dimond is home to the high school portion of Anchorage’s Japanese Immersion Program. Students in the Immersion Program begin their studies at Sand Lake Elementary. The program continues at Mears Middle School, where students further their content studies in Japanese. Finally, the well-developed Ê®·ÖÁùºÏ²Ê program culminates at Dimond High School. Here the classes emphasize expanding oral language proficiency through thematic, content-based units.
Japanese offerings at Dimond also include an elective Japanese language track. Designed for students beginning their Japanese language studies in middle school or high school, this course series includes beginning classes all the way through A.P. Japanese. Given the current interest in Japan’s pop culture, anime, manga, J-pop, a wide spectrum of students start their study of Japanese at Dimond’s well-rounded proficiency oriented program.
Students in our top Japanese classes have two advanced opportunities. They can become paired up with local Japanese community members who “adopt” our students and participate in monthly activities together while using Japanese. In this Adopt-A-Student Program, students get a chance to cook, go shopping, flip through photo albums, or play games while speaking Japanese with their hosts. In addition, students can elect to take AP Japanese. This class allows students to take college level instruction while still in high school. The content is nationally certified and the grade is weighted on a 5.0 scale.
Dimond provides a broad and deep program of studies for its students of Japanese. It is an exciting community of learners with a focus on both the language and culture of Japan!
