Debbie Briggs Professional Enrichment Feversham College Bradford

1. Debbie Briggs Professional Enrichment Feversham College Bradford

2. Feversham College • A Voluntary Aided Specialist Science School for • Muslim girls aged 11-18 years • Around 600 pupils from many different primary • schools and backgrounds. • The vast majority of pupils speak English as an • additional language and speak another language at home. • Some pupils have only moved to England in the last 2 or 3 years. • MFL offered to A level are Arabic and Urdu • (not compulsory at KS4)

3. Original Project – study of MFL at Feversham • Observe sessions across the year groups • Observe students’ listening, speaking, reading and written • skills in languages whose written form is not Roman Script and written from right to left. • Note weak areas and strengths - do first languages other than English have an impact on student's ability to learn Urdu or Arabic?   • Notice any literacy strategies that are used by the teachers - classroom displays that could possibly be replicated in French and German. • What is effective/ less effective?

4. MFL - Original project findings. • Observe year 7 and 10 (different abilities). Differentiated lessons. • Pupils struggled a LOT to write the Arabic and Urdu script accurately. They found it easier to write phonetically and were allowed to do this for speaking activities. • EAL in itself did not seem to me to hinder MFL acquisition, and in some instances pupils were more confident in Arabic than English. • Literacy strategies – classroom displays were very effective. The Arabic teacher believed this is the number one thing to make language acquisition effective. Pupils need to be presented with the strategies and work it out themselves. • Grammar featured heavily and pupils were expected to work out patterns.

5. New P.E. Project (week 1) – Observe EAL at Feversham across the curriculum • Identify the additional problems faced by EAL learners. • Observe strategies employed by staff for EAL learners. • How well can EAL pupils communicate? • Are EAL learners disadvantaged at GCSE?

6. Observing EAL – findings and strategies • EAL learners can generally communicate well verbally, and can easily hold • a conversation colloquially with each other and with teachers in understandable • English. The language sounds quite slangy, but this is usual with teenagers! • Some pupils did have a reader in exams and 10% extra time. • Pupils struggle with cultural references and context. E.g. when asked to think of • pairs of sisters in popular culture, they struggled as often do not watch English TV. • Pupil’s level of academic English was lower than average, both comprehension • and language they produced. Pupils did not read exam questions properly, and as • such missed out on marks even though they knew the answer. Spelling was particularly • inaccurate, with many pupils writing words that examiners would not be able to read, • and missing out on marks because of this. • I believe pupils could easily be disadvantaged at GCSE. Teachers need to work on • literacy to ensure that pupils read and write the papers in the way that will get them the marks. • e.g in maths pupls struggled with remembering what ‘add’ ‘multiply’ etc. meant. Spanish girl • Maria was fine with sums but cold not cope with scenario questions.

7. Strategies to allow pupils to learn • A lot of strategies for supporting EA learners are very similar to strategies • employed in the teaching of MFL. • Modelling, closed questions, recognition games, match up, odd one out. • Role play, dominoes, extend your sentence, true/ false, sequencing, key words. • Group work, drama, rehearsal before writing, writing frame, hotseating, strategies.

8. Week 2 – New pupil Maria Case Study • Maria has joined the school today (beginning of week 2) • from Barcelona, but her family come originally from the Gambia. • Her family have just moved here from Spain to try to find work. • Maria has a very low level of English. • Maria has also had a lot of time off school and moved around a lot. • She struggles academically in her native tongue and was worried • about this when I first spoke to her. She wanted me to warn the teachers. I spent much of this second week accompanying Maria to her lessons, and attempting to help her understand. Maria is an example of a brand new EAL learner and exhibits typical difficulties.

9. Problems that Maria Encountered • Could not understand what the teachers were saying. • Could not understand the subject matter in the lesson. • Did not understand the tasks. • Could not express her opinion or answers. • Teachers were woried and unsure about what to do with Maria. Strategies to help? • Traffic lights in planner • ‘ My Dictionary’ with a few words in and space to add more for each letter. • At first teachers were unprepared but then they differentiated for Maria. • e.g. dominoes task in maths • Lots of extra English. 1:1 • Patience

10. Summary of Professional Enrichment The effective teaching and learning of MFL and EAL comes down Essentially to the same thing – effective strategies. With these strategies a learner can pick up any language, but without the strategies for knowing HOW it all fits together they will forget everything.