CASE STUDIES 5 - 7 YEARS OLD
TEACHER’S NAME: SARAH-JANE JACKSON, St Michael’s CE Infant School, Aldershot
YEAR GROUP OF PUPILS: Y2 (6 - 7 Years)
TOPIC OF ENQUIRY
Reading comprehension with one Y2 able EAL learner
Exploring writing activities with Y2 EAL learners
TARGETTING (what specifically are you seeking as outcomes?)
Improving reading comprehension
Improving specific aspects of writing
ANALYSING BEST PRACTICE (summary of research supporting your practice in this area)
Cameron and Besser (2004) identify the need for explicit teaching of the conventions (grammar, genre, tone, style etc.) of written English for EAL learners.
Pupils with a developing fluency in spoken English are likely to be beginning to read and write in English, but a continuing focus on the development of spoken language remains crucial in order that explicit knowledge about the way that English works is introduced (Krashen, 1986; Swain 2000).
Some pupils may acquire phonic knowledge and be able to decode quickly, but their skills in comprehension take longer and need explicit attention (Stuart, 2004).
Reading comprehension is related to the pupils’ vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of text types, knowledge of and interest in the subject matter (Hutchinson, Whitely, Smith and Connors, 2003).
Pupils’ access to reading is related directly to their current level of spoken English and breadth of vocabulary (Droop and Verhoeven, 1998).
Sections of the MESH guide that you may be useful: see sections on Spoken English as well as on Writing for Beginner/Advanced EAL Learners; see Reading for all levels of learners; see Planning Activities Related to Language Needs; see Key Principles for EAL Learners.
CLARIFYING (What is the context for your research? How many pupils? Related class and school targets? Your own existing strengths?)
I have been less confident in supporting my more able EAL learners and want to know more about supporting children who are more fluent. I am more confident with activities to support beginner and new to English learners.
I have a role supporting writing across the year group, which includes supporting vulnerable learners.
TRANSLATING BEST PRACTICE (what will you do? How many times? How long?)
Working for the 6 week period between half term and Easter 2015.
We will trial some of the suggested activities and advice in the MESH guide in order to explore our teaching of writing with EAL learners. We may try spoken English activities such as pre-teaching of specific grammar/ vocab using speaking frames, and games that focus on tenses and conjunctions.
INTERPRETING RESULTS (what happened ?– outcomes may be numerical or described in words)
I focussed more on reading comprehension than on writing. As I completed the Year 2 SATS reading comprehension practice I realised that my more able EAL child was expected to reach Level 3 reading but missed the mark by 4. Although he reads fluently, he sometimes doesn't understand the meaning of the text or the question being asked. I found the guide most useful for this issue. I clicked on 'Reading for Advanced Learners' to confirm the characteristics for the child and used the NADILC link which suggests sequencing stories to show understanding of meaning. I then read about the jigsaw technique then to the British Council EAL Nexus site, which explained about the way it worked. I could see that when the group were reading a report about elephants, each child could then be the expert on their particular paragraph and tell me what they had read/understood. I found this VERY useful in the reading group to help me see if the EAL learner understood what he actually read. Also the highlighting of the text whereby the children highlight with a colour the answer located in the text. This enabled me to see whether the EAL learner could scan/locate and skim and helped him to answer the questions.
My pupil got 5 more marks on the actual SAT paper than on the practice following the intervention and so attained level 3 in reading comprehension for his Year 2 SAT. He is also a 2a writer. He had lost some time in the Autumn term of Year 2 with an extended trip home to India, and so we are very pleased with these outcomes which exceed what might have been expected of him.
COMMENTING ON TRANSFORMATIONS (what might this mean for your practice and for the pupils as learners?)
Although I focussed on reading comprehension I also set out to use this guide to help improve writing in my class with EAL children. I used the writing advice and looked up the table in the Writing for New to English Learners which suggested thinking about the types of language the children may need for the specific writing/genre. I found this by clicking 'integrated literacy activities' and then the website link for NALDIC, then the link to 'glossary of EAL teaching and learning'. This was very useful when thinking about and planning a topic. We would put an extra EAL box on our topic planning with anything needed to be taught, eg. before beginning report writing, it made us think about which devices EAL children may need. I have worked with another Year 2 teacher on targeted intervention of our EAL learners for specific aspects of writing – namely use of generalisers and quantifiers in report writing.
I feel more advanced in my knowledge for EAL planning – particularly for teaching reading for meaning. I realise that this able learner’s fluency at word recognition was masking his comprehension.
SELECTING NEXT STEPS ( what might you do next? More of the same? Try a different approach?)
I feel more advanced in my knowledge for EAL planning – particularly for teaching reading for meaning. I have passed the ideas used on to the Year 2 teaching team who will be using the reading activities in their Guided Reading sessions. It has made us think before planning about targeted interventions for children for their writing. We found the section on integrated literacy activities particularly useful in terms of thinking about the types of language children might need to focus on really helpful. (This NALDIC link is aimed at GCSE English but the activities were still applicable to KS 1 and especially helpful for reading http://www.naldic.org.uk/Resources/NALDIC/docs/GlossarypagesfromEdexcelGCSEEnglishCoreTeacherGuide.pdf)
TEACHER’S NAME: SAM DAVIES, Harrison Primary School, Fareham
YEAR GROUP OF PUPILS: Y1 (5 – 6 YEARS)
TOPIC OF ENQUIRY
Using monolingual role models to support EAL children with phonic knowledge for reading.
TARGETTING (what specifically are you seeking as outcomes?)
Developing the phonic knowledge of three EAL learners with different home languages.
Support towards the Y1 phonics screening check summer 2015.
ANALYSING BEST PRACTICE (summary of research supporting your practice in this area)
Krashen (1986) and Swain (2000) identify that EAL learners need explicit introduction to the way that English works (in this case to the sound system for English).
Literacy proficiency in first language affects literacy proficiency in second language (August and Shanhan, 2006); thus it will be useful for me to know if they are learning to reading and writing in their home language; how their home languages are different from English; if they received any formal education in their home countries.
I need to bear in mind that phonic knowledge does not necessarily support comprehension and that this intervention is supporting only one aspect of the reading process. Stuart (2004) found that EAL learners may quickly develop phonic knowledge but without vocabulary learning their comprehension doesn’t keep pace with word reading.
Interactive talk-based activities support second language development (Lucas, Villegas and Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008)
MESH guide sections most related to this project: Theories of Additional Language Learning; Spoken English for New to English and Beginner English Learners; Reading for New to English and Beginner English Learners.
CLARIFYING (What is the context for your research? How many pupils? Related class and school targets? Your own existing strengths?)
I have a number of EAL learners in my class and there are EAL learners in the other Y1 classes. As senior teacher it is my role to trial pedagogy that the other teachers may find useful, thus I will work with EAL learners from two classes.
The research will be with a mixed monolingual/bilingual group. The EAL learners are children from Portugal, France and Greece and are at varying stages of fluency but all need support with learning the main sounds of English. They will work with two monolingual children who are attaining relatively well and who will benefit from having to articulate their phonic knowledge to the EAL learners.
The Portuguese child is at Phase 2 of Letters and Sounds
The French child is at Phase 4
The Greek child is working between Phase 1 and 2.
TRANSLATING BEST PRACTICE (what will you do? How many times? How long?)
6 week period up to Easter 2015
I will make an initial assessment of each child before the project begins in terms of their level of phonic knowledge.
I will work once a week with the group as described above using interactive game-based activities that support phonic knowledge.
INTERPRETING RESULTS (what happened ?– outcomes may be numerical or described in words)
Children really keen to come and work with me on a weekly basis
Initially the monolingual children and French speaking child were the more dominant in the session with the Portuguese and Greek child taking a more backseat position. However as time as progressed, the other two girls became much more involved and confident in their answers, in fact when I suggested that we would stop these sessions, I was met with a resounding ‘No’ from all girls involved!
I have found this very useful for the children as it has allowed me to be very focused in my delivery of the session. We have trialled a range of activities and certain activities have proven more successful than others.
It has also allowed me to address the children more as individuals and I have identified some other issues that I hadn’t been aware of previously, which then allowed me to adjust my class practise where appropriate for these children.
COMMENTING ON TRANSFORMATIONS (what might this mean for your practice and for the pupils as learners?)
The Portuguese and Greek child have become much more confident and involved in sessions as time has progressed, keen to participate
Continue with weekly sessions till end of summer term – assess children during next couple of weeks so that I can target specific sounds, need to move onto digraphs / trigraphs.
SELECTING NEXT STEPS ( what might you do next? More of the same? Try a different approach?)
· Continue these sessions – at children’s request.
· Focus on digraphs / trigraphs – targeted sounds as result of phonics assessment.
