ICT Vignette 1

NC Subject and Topic:
English/Literacy. These activities took place within the Literacy Hour and were part of work on the NLS range of literature for Y2 Term 2: traditional stories / stories from other cultures. Key Stage: 1

Focus pupils and school:
An inner city primary school in a rural county with approximately 400 pupils and 10% EAL and 10 home languages. There is a high turnover of EAL pupils, and hence range of languages: some EAL pupils are Asylum Seekers, and others are with families on short term assignments to local hospital and college, as well as a small stable Asian population.

The lesson took place in a Y2 class which has 4 EAL pupils: one Kurdish/Turkish Asylum Seeker pupil, recently arrived with no previous schooling, one Korean pupil recently arrived with some literacy skills in first language, two British Bengali speaking pupils: one competent in social English, one at early stages of acquiring English.

Context
A partnership teaching situation. The focus for a series of lessons was on reading traditional stories, retelling stories, and rewriting stories with different characters and settings.

The Lesson
The class teacher receives support from an EAL teacher (from the central LEA EMAS team) once or twice a week for part or all of the literacy hour. This support involves a range of strategies, with a mixture of partnership teaching, withdrawal work in a parallel small group: of EAL pupils, or a mixed group. In the lesson described, the EAL teacher led the whole class session using the interactive whiteboard; then withdrew a small group of EAL and other pupils, working in a separate teaching area using a laptop for group work; finally the EAL teacher supported the small group in giving feedback to the whole class in the plenary session.

Background to lesson:
The class have been reading a range of traditional stories. Some of these have been in big book format, and some have been read on the interactive whiteboard using a multilingual resource: Hounslow Talking Stories Project (Available from Hounslow EMAS, www.ealinhounslow.org.uk). This enabled the class to listen in Bengali as well as English. All pupils being able to clearly see the illustrations during reading, helped keep their attention, even for EAL pupils without bilingual support.
In this series of lessons, the class had read The Fox and the Crane. The reading has been followed by shared writing using Clicker4 on the interactive whiteboard. This has allowed modelling of forms for independent work.

Class retelling of the fox and the crane, with some sentences provided by EAL pupils.



The class had next read The Hare and the Tortoise. They had done a sequencing activity on the interactive whiteboard, to check understanding of the story, followed by a writing exercise in which they completed a picture sequence of the Hare and Tortoise story, adding the ending and a final picture (resource from: Essentials for English: Story Sequencing KS1 photocopiable worksheets, p 24, published by Scholastic). The class teacher supported the beginner EAL pupils’ group in this, and Korean pupil was able to supply his own sentence ‘Hare was surprised’ and was willing to attempt his own spelling for this.

Description of the lesson:
The lesson began by reviewing the story of The Hare and the Tortoise, on the interactive whiteboard, using the sequencing activity, with pupil participation.
The aim of the lesson was to introduce a model for their own story writing, based on changing the characters: choosing a fast and a slow – or big and small, animal, introducing a dilemma, and providing an ending. The class would continue work on their own story writing during the rest of the week.
The class were shown a range of animals on a Clicker grid on the interactive whiteboard, and discussed which were fast and which were slow, big and small. The class then grouped animals by directing teacher, into Fast and Slow; Big and Small. and pupils, including EAL pupils chose 2 fast and 2 slow to use in the class story.



The 4 chosen animals were then inserted in a pre-prepared Clicker grid which supplied a choice of story beginnings.
Story starters were discussed. The class decided what to write, and this was written on the interactive whiteboard.



This was followed by a second and third sentence written as a whole class, with the support of pre-prepared Clicker grids. Oral discussion followed of what might happen next. Mixed ability groups then worked on a group story, with one pupil as scribe. The EAL teacher worked with a group including some able pupils as good peer models for language. The story was continued, with the teacher scribing, on the lap-top.
Some of the class story ‘middles’ were shared in the plenary session. The EAL group showed theirs on the interactive whiteboard, and the EAL pupils were able to read this aloud with the whole class.

Folow-up lesson:
The next lesson involved the discussion of endings. It followed a similar format. The EAL teacher had printed out the group story from the laptop, and pupils in the EAL/mixed ability group wrote their own endings. The EAL teacher was not present for this lesson, but a Teaching Assistant worked with the Kurdish pupil on the laptop. The pupil was able to complete the story, orally (from ’Bye’ see below) and typed this in with help – she could repeat the names of many animals, and type short words like ‘and’ independently.

This pupil was able to show her story ending to the class on the interactive whiteboard, and the picture support enabled her to read aloud her work with confidence.

Strategies for teaching/learning EAL used in the lesson and how ICT supported/ enabled these.

• activating prior knowledge: use of bilingual texts supports EAL pupils in understanding content
• rich contextual background: sound and visuals – spoken text and illustrations; sequencing activity involving demonstrating understanding through touching screen - without need for spoken response enabled learners to interact with text and participate in whole class session.
• comprehensible output: using Clicker writing grids allowed pupils to use speech and picture support to produce their own work, and also aided them in their feedback in the plenary session.
• relationship between form and function: a range of sentence structures for beginning stories was practised; these could easily be demonstrated using Clicker grids to send writing for all to see on the whiteboard.
• learner independence – Clicker writing grids with speech and picture support allowed some independence in writing for beginner EAL pupils.
  
  Contributed by Sheilagh Crowther