Teaching English to first generation learners

NISA School Leaders Summit,Dec 5 2012

Common factors affecting teaching/learning English

• Parents have no /very little literacy or English language skills

• No exposure to language and no opportunities for practice

• Teacher language skills need enhancing• Methodology needs to focus on development of

skills ( listening speaking reading and writing) • Teaching learning material has to be chosen with

specific needs in mind• Clarity of objective of teaching ( as a 2nd

Language/ medium of instruction )

Teaching oral language

To develop oral communication skills, focus on activities that encourage learners to talk in a supportive environment such as in pairs or groups. • information gap activities where learners have

to exchange information in order to complete a task

• Opinion gap activities where learners share and discuss their own personal feelings, attitudes or preferences about ideas or topics

Teaching oral language

• General communicative activities - games, group work, songs, everyday classroom interactions

• Formal talks, oral reports and presentations. Debates, skits performance , show and tell , circle time etc.

• Encourage use of academic related vocabulary - Math vocabulary, Scientific vocabulary

• Drill commonly used structures

Content Vocabulary(Specific to subjects)

Academic Vocabulary(Used across all content areas)

Support Vocabulary

Conversational English

Math vocabulary Add , Minus, Subtract, Multiply, Denominator, NumeratorScience vocabulary

Tripod, vapour, photosynthesis

Questioning words :

What, when who , why , where, explain

Explain, analyze, separate, distinguish

Words used in text books and worksheets that are challenging and students need to understand meanings in context

Words and structure used in conversational English

Games that help to reinforce oral language

Simon Says : use to reinforce actions and vocabulary related to actions. The game is played by the teacher or student giving instructions to the whole class Eg : Simon says sit down; Simon says lift your right hand; Simon says turn to your left and walk four steps.

The difficulty level and the way in which the game is played can be decided by the teacher according to skills and vocabulary to be taught and reinforced

Show and tell :

This can be a part of every English class / class circle time where two or three children get a chance to show and talk about something that is of great interest to them every day Example : They may bring a picture of their favourite movie star and talk about him; They may bring their pet dog to school and talk about the dos to the class

Generally this activity will only take about 5 minutes and care should be taken to ensure that over the week or month all students get a chance to participate

Teachers can help with the vocabulary and language content . The activity is more effective if there can be a question and answer session as part of the activity where other students question the presenter

Teaching reading

Phonic methods of teaching reading • sets of sounds and sound groupings which

differ from the first language• intonation patterns and their meanings• patterns of stress and pause • grammar conventions eg different word

order in sentences • print conventions eg reading from left to

right

Phonic reading programsSynthetic PhonicsJolly Phonics

Teaching Phonics 1.Learning the letter sounds: Children are taught the 42 main letter sounds. This includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.

2.Learning letter formation: Using different multi-sensory methods, children learn how to form and write the letters.

3.Blending: Children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words.

4.Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting): Listening for the sounds in words gives children the best start for improving spelling.

5.Tricky words: Tricky words have irregular spellings and children learn these separately.

Jolly Phonics Letter introduction sequence

http://jollylearning.co.uk/2010/11/02/jolly-phonics-presentations/

Listening/ Auditory

Speaking/ saying aloud

Seeing/ visual

Doing/ Kinesthetic

Extension activities:

• Vocabulary lists to include active and passive vocabulary

• Subject related vocabulary to be included

Reading programs : • Teacher reading stories and text to students• Independent and guided reading • Drop Everything and Read

Choose reading materials that:• have good visual cues to enable the student to

access the story easily• reflect the experiences, knowledge and interests

of the learners

Involve the learner in a number of reading experiences every day which focus on language in context • Exposure to meaningful print in the immediate

environment - signs, charts, labels• Use a range of texts to develop understandings

of the organisation and language features of different genres and the conventions of English

• Taped reading • Shared book experiences and big books• wordless books/ picture sequences/ photographs

to build a story/recount• Cloze activities to focus on comprehension or on

different aspects of language

Reading material and strategies

Reading material should be chosen so that they are contextual and related to the life and experiences of beginning readers Use graded reading material with visual clues if possible – The Orient Longman – CIEFL reading 400 series is a good example of graded reading Encourage children to keep track of their own reading levels Retelling and discussion is important to check understandingHave a class library where each student contributes one book of their choice and have all students complete all the books by the end of the year

Reading circles

Reading circles in groups of four or six– Have sets of four books available.• Let students choose their own book• Form teams based on students' choices of books• Encourage readers to use notes, post-its, and

discussion questions to analyse their books • Have teams conduct discussions about the book• Facilitate further discussion with the whole class

on each of the books• Have teams share what they read with the

whole class• Book reviews to be written and put up in

class/school

Writing skills

• Classroom teachers can help students to develop writing skills by using a variety of strategies that help promote students‛ thinking in English

• Spend more time in pre-writing stage• Generating oral sentences before writing• Use of graphic organizers• Model good writing at their language level• Brainstorm vocabulary and make lists• Teach non-fiction reading and writing first• Integrate with other disciplines including art,

music and drama

Rather than having students simply memorize information, teachers must model and explicitly teach skills Some strategies: • Taking something meaningful from the

students’ everyday lives and using it as a springboard to interest them in language use

• Use of modelling, graphic organizers, and a variety of visual aids, including pictures, diagrams, and charts, helps students recognize essential information and its relationship to supporting ideas.

• Use vocabulary journals, word lists, word webs, word walls.

• Use interactive editing, cloze paragraphs, dictations, subject-specific journals

Scaffold learners’ writing by: • modelling all aspects of the writing process• teaching the text organization and language

features of different genres through a range of different activities

• jointly constructing texts with students• supporting the development of editing and proof

reading skills• using shared experiences(eg excursions) to write

class or individual books/texts• using photos and other visual stimuli (such as

sequenced pictures) in the early stages of writing development particularly

• using groups and pairs to develop group texts

Assessment of Learning ( Formative and Summative )

• Content Retelling, Content Dictation, vocabulary tests using unfamiliar content of grade level

• Cloze Procedure exercises• Graphic Representation/ semantic maps• Writing Samples• Group quiz, participation, presentation• Teacher Observation / Anecdotal• Portfolio• Formal tests covering LSRW skills

Teacher Development specific to teaching of English – What do we focus on ?

• Developing teacher skills in English• Defining learning outcomes• Use of teaching methodology which focuses on

skill development• Assessment of learning feeding back to

classroom teaching• Ensuring student engagement • Identifying, creating and using teaching –

learning material

Teacher Development specific to teaching of English – How do we do this ?

• Workshops and training• Reading circles for teachers using different

types of text• Discussion groups • Intensive lesson planning sessions conducted at

least once a week and moderated by the subject leads

• Peer observation and feedback

Teaching learning material used at Christel House

• Jolly phonics(http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics)

• Orient Longman reading cards ( Reading 400 series)

• Oxford reading tree(http://www.oup.com/oxed/primary/oxfordreadingtree)

• Ginn readers

• Marigold readers and workbooks

• Pratham books ( http://blog.prathambooks.org)

• Internet resources