Secretary Clinton's Remarks on Women, Peace, and Security
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Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe Tout savoir sur nos offres
3
pages
English
Documents
Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe Tout savoir sur nos offres
- cours - matière potentielle : attendance
- peace negotiators
- greater levels of political participation by women
- women as policy makers
- world development report
- gender
- security
- human rights
- peace
- women
- conflict
WORKING WITH STUDENTS WITH EAL: SHARING IDEAS AND PRACTICE
As part of the Edge Hill programme beginning history teachers take part in an online discussion fol-lowing their Developmental placement in February. Using the NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) website, select 2 articles to read along with other members of your group. Summarize the most important points from the articles you chose and discuss the impli-cations of these issues for you as history teachers.
www.naldic.org.uk/docs/resources/Keydocs.cfm www.naldic.org.uk/docs/resources/naldic_quarterly.cfm
You will be working as small group of trainees, some of you will have experience of working with EAL students and it would be valuable to share your experiences and then try to make connections between the articles you will have read. You will find that you have your own discussion area on the Web Ct bulletin board. The comments are useful as they provide you with an idea of the range of experiences you are likely to experience and there are some suggestions for simple but effective strategies for beginning to teach with EAL students. This activity was first suggested by Dr Ruth Lea from Leicester University.
Observation 1
“The finest EAL lesson I have ever seen was taught by a woodwork teacher at school in Liverpool. What do you do with a class 50 per cent of whom are Somali girls, the majority of whom do not speak any English and are excruciatingly shy? You have lots of fun, that is what you do. The teacher man-aged to get them to come out of their shells and answer questions. They answered by rote admittedly, but they were participating for they first time in this strange cold country, and were really enjoying themselves (I could tell by the volume involved in answering the questions).” “I have been on the receiving end of EAL, well CAL (Chinese as an additional language) really. The first stage I went through was complete immersion in the language. It is easy to underestimate the importance of being surrounded by people who only speak the additional language and are speaking it to you all the time. There is a temptation in some schools to separate (almost full-time) those pupils who do not speak any English for very intensive English language lessons. In actual fact, children learn much of their language from other children, hence my fluency in Chinese swear words. This process is a very successful and natural way of normalizing the English language (in my case Chinese) and how it is used by native speakers.” “English as an additional language pupils do need structured literacy lessons specifically designed for them, but not to the point of excluding them from normal use of English.” “As teachers of history, we will not be giving them literacy lessons but we do need to pay special attention to EAL learners in our lesson planning of both lesson delivery and any resources. There are many things that you can do to differentiate. For example, simplify language, use lower-level ques-tioning (initially) from Bloom’s taxonomy and increase the amount of visual learning in your lessons. We can also include them by finding parallels with their own cultures/countries, for example, concepts or images that they are alreadyfamiliar with (I used the example of a Yemeni marketplace to help them visualize a medieval market). You can plan group work around other students you think may help the EAL student, the obvious examples being those pupils that can speak the same language as well as fluent English. Teacher assistants (TAs) can also be a great help in this situation.” “It is also important to be aware of the EAL pupil’s background. For example, the pupil may have come from a country where schooling is very different or even non-existent. Things like textbooks, exercise books and even pencils may have been a luxury item, never mind computers and interactive whiteboards. Your pupil may not have used them much, they may even not have sat in a classroom before. The EAL learner may also have come from a country where the script is very different, exam-ples include Chinese and Arabic. Simply copying from a book or worksheet may take time but remains beneficial to get them practised at writing our script.” “Many EAL pupils speak English so fluently that you could be unaware of the fact that they are EAL. This is where unexpected problems can arise. Because the student has not learnt English in the way that we have, i.e speaking it at home from infancy, there may be strange gaps in their vocabulary.”
“I have spent the last four years providing literacy support to a Chinese primary school pupil. This little boy is extremely academic and his vocabulary is two years ahead of his age. He has no problem reading very advanced texts but may not know the meaning of a very simple word because he had never heard it used before. Understanding the abstract use of language can also be particularly diffi-cult for the EAL student (even those who are fluent). Examples in the history classroom can include poetry, song lyrics or even sources written in YE OLDE ENGLISHE.” “When the pupil speaks no English at all, it is time to face facts and accept that you may not be able to teach any history to them. What you must concentrate on is including the pupil, and supporting lit-eracy. Speaking English to them, getting them to write English and encouraging them to participate in some small way to boost their confidence, is all beneficial. This is why the woodwork lesson was so successful; the girls may not have understood much but they were participating.” “My first port of call for help with EAL students will be to the EAL co-ordinator (if the school has one) and then to the TAs that work with individual pupils. They will know the pupil best, both acad-emically and personally. Involving a pupil in your lesson requires you to know the individual regardless of whether you can communicate with them or not. In fact, knowing the individual is more important when you cannot fully communicate with them.”
Observation 2
“My only experience of EAL was a Year 10 Chinese pupil whose English was limited. The teaching was mostly team teaching and I was severely shocked that the class teacher did not make any provision for him, except to ask him if he was fine throughout the lesson to which he would reply, ‘OK’. When I taught him I give him a separate handout that would break down the lesson, but this was still not a great help. The strategy details him as an ‘isolated learner’, as he was the only EAL pupil, which may be more difficult to cater for than a class of many.”
Observation 3
“During my week in primary school I worked with a Year 5 girl who had just arrived from Somalia. She was a brilliant mathematician but spoke almost no English. Luckily there were other Somali chil-dren in the class who translated for her, and although it was very early days, she seemed to be coping well. However, there was no real guidance for the class teacher or TA as to how to help her, or any real attempt (during the limited time I spent in the class) to provide appropriately differentiated activities. The hope simply was that she would learn English quickly and learn to cope with life in an English classroom. No doubt by now she is getting on fine and has learnt the language – but in those early days it seems extremely important to provide support and make what must surely be a highly traumatic transition as manageable as possible.”
Observation 4
“I was fortunate to witness a one-on-one English session with an EAL specialist. The pupil who attended the session was in Year 9, from Uganda, and came to the country in Year 7 with no English skills. The main point I grasped from the Boulter article, ‘Why EAL learners need specialist support teachers’, was that EAL learn-ers can show significant misunderstanding of key English words, therefore specialist report teachers are so important. What Sue Boulter writes is pretty much the same as what I witnessed in the session, the pupil and the EAL teacher spoke about various words, what their meanings were and how they could be put into a sentence. Boulter continuously shows throughout the article how important it is for such structured support for the EAL learners. We as history teachers can only scratch the surface of teaching this complex and vital learning skill. English as an additional language learners need as much support as possible, and need not only to be aware of mistakes they make, but also to understand how and why they are mistakes.” “Boulter’s article is very enlightening. It backs up what I witnessed and shows how challenging the task can be. Support teachers for EAL are vital in a school of diverse populations. In the NALDIC arti-cle, the statements back up what Boulter is trying to get across from her script. ‘Pupils need to learn both formal rules of grammar and pervasive social rules of use’ (NALDIC). English as an additional language support teachers are important for providing the help and encouragement that pupils with English as an additional language vitally and rightly need.”
The article outlines a classroom situation:
Sue Boulter is the EAL support teacher at her school and during this study she was teaching a History les-son on The Roman Invasion to a year 3 class. Sue introduced vocabulary such as invasion, fight, violence, enemy etc. The bilingual classroom assistant was asked to carry out an L1 assessment for one of the pupils. The assessment revealed some classic EAL misunderstandings of meanings of words, for instance:
* Conquer was thought to mean ‘conkers’ growing on trees, * Hostile was thought to mean ‘hospital’, * Settlement was understood in terms of the teacher talk meaning ‘settle down’!!!!
Observation 5
“I used to print leaflets for London Borough of Greenwich, I recall when the council consulted on prettifying the social housing in Charlton we printed versions for 47 languages.” “Without wishing to go into the extent to which Britain has succeeded in following a multi-cultural path (I believe multi-culturalism is now termed diversity), I think it is fair to say that there are increas-ingly moves toward assimilation rather than accommodation of immigrant communities whatever their initial impetus to settle in Britain. With specific regard to the teaching of History, it appears to me that teaching History to EAL pupils is a vehicle tailor-made toward assimilation rather than accommodating diversity. We are all aware of the political nature of History and the inherent national bias that exists in schools History. This is not peculiar to any unit of human organisation and will be found in any measure by which an identity is accorded to an individual or group of individuals. In this respect I wonder whether it is appropriate to teach history to those pupils without sufficient language skills in English to fully understand the implications of the material they are receiving.” “To what extent is the historical identity of a recently arrived pupil in Britain to be considered in comparison to the British standpoint of their history? To me, Britain’s Imperial past, the history of social classes and women have been tackled by the adoption of empathetic historical studies, that have sought to acknowledge the varying experiences of individuals and groups in contrast to the traditional famous men and battles approach and the implied value of their actions. The value and success of this approach and the degree to which this is patronising or otherwise is always subject to where your own moral and political compass is pointing. However if this empathetic approach is to be replaced by a more determined attempt to instill the values of the host nation(whatever they may be!) then poten-tially history becomes more politically charged than ever. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of teaching a prescribed curriculum when my own personal creed is based on promoting independent thought. I accept that for the practical functioning of any community a common language is desirable but cannot extend this to a “correct” view of History. I have many arguments with the history taught in schools and the additional needs of EAL pupils only compound my concerns. Don’t know if this rel-evant to what we’re supposed to be discussing here but what I’ve read so far about EAL is all about practical considerations and nothing about why, what or who.”
