This is part 3 of a three part blog on how EAL teachers and homeroom teachers encouraged language development during a grade 2 unit of inquiry with the central idea: "By developing awareness of an urban environment, we can modify and understand the way we live in it."
In part 1 and part 2, I focused on language development activities for ALL grade 2 students, EAL or mainstream. In this part, I will focus on how EAL students learned more in depth language through a series of authentic activities during our pull-out EAL lessons that occur when mainstream students attend foreign language classes and Khmer students (some of who are partial support EAL students) attend Khmer language lessons.
Students in this 45 minute pull-out EAL class that occurs three times a week receive more practice speaking, listening to, reading, and writing in English as it is used for more academic purposes. After analysing some of the EAL students' responses from a Google Forms based survey (described in part 2) I knew that many of these students would need a reason to practice and use both the vocabulary of the unit that touched upon features of cities (tall buildings, traffic, public transportation, etc.) as well as language used to identify and describe these features (adjectives, prepositions to describe location, sentence structures like: "It is a...It has a...It is (preposition of location)...There is a...next to...etc.) I also knew from planning with homeroom teachers that students were inquiring into maps and coordinate grids during math.
I therefore decided to try and develop an activity that would cause students to create and discuss maps using target language that they had developed together during their homeroom lesson times, augmented by prepositions of place supplied by teachers on a word bank. Originally, I had wanted my EAL students to create lists of words to describe location as well, but this would have stretched the series of lessons out too far.
Using mother tongue inquiries as a springboard into language development
Students began working, when possible with a student who spoke the same mother tongue to encourage more interaction, to begin to explore some vocabulary of the unit by finding out what terms like subway, building, park, etc. were in their mother tongues using Google Translate (or language specific platforms such as Hamariweb for Urdu to English translations including audio). Even if students could not write their mother tongues, as is unfortunately often the case, I wanted them to hear the mother tongue translations. Often, this hearing would provoke "Ah-haaa!" moments when students realised they actually did know a mother tongue version of the English vocabulary.
Using maps to encourage authentic vocabulary practice
After this initial learning activity to make students aware of their prior knowledge, albeit in another language than English, students with partners were then given a partially created map of a small urban environment.
Students were instructed to discuss with a partner and add pictures and labels of locations and features to this map to show what an urban environment was like and to maybe make this urban environment better to live in. Students were also supplied with copies of word clouds to help with spelling and remembering features of cities (described in part 2).
Students were then given a word bank with language to describe location and asked to write 5 "starter" sentences that could help them describe locations in their cities to others.
Increasing engagement through a barrier game
Then came the game-like aspect. Student pairs were paired off with other student pairs, a barrier was placed between them, and they were challenged to recreate each others' maps based on verbal descriptions on a new blank map. Before starting, we also discussed how to ask clarifying questions.
In part 1 and part 2, I focused on language development activities for ALL grade 2 students, EAL or mainstream. In this part, I will focus on how EAL students learned more in depth language through a series of authentic activities during our pull-out EAL lessons that occur when mainstream students attend foreign language classes and Khmer students (some of who are partial support EAL students) attend Khmer language lessons.
Students in this 45 minute pull-out EAL class that occurs three times a week receive more practice speaking, listening to, reading, and writing in English as it is used for more academic purposes. After analysing some of the EAL students' responses from a Google Forms based survey (described in part 2) I knew that many of these students would need a reason to practice and use both the vocabulary of the unit that touched upon features of cities (tall buildings, traffic, public transportation, etc.) as well as language used to identify and describe these features (adjectives, prepositions to describe location, sentence structures like: "It is a...It has a...It is (preposition of location)...There is a...next to...etc.) I also knew from planning with homeroom teachers that students were inquiring into maps and coordinate grids during math.
I therefore decided to try and develop an activity that would cause students to create and discuss maps using target language that they had developed together during their homeroom lesson times, augmented by prepositions of place supplied by teachers on a word bank. Originally, I had wanted my EAL students to create lists of words to describe location as well, but this would have stretched the series of lessons out too far.
Using mother tongue inquiries as a springboard into language development
Students began working, when possible with a student who spoke the same mother tongue to encourage more interaction, to begin to explore some vocabulary of the unit by finding out what terms like subway, building, park, etc. were in their mother tongues using Google Translate (or language specific platforms such as Hamariweb for Urdu to English translations including audio). Even if students could not write their mother tongues, as is unfortunately often the case, I wanted them to hear the mother tongue translations. Often, this hearing would provoke "Ah-haaa!" moments when students realised they actually did know a mother tongue version of the English vocabulary.
Using maps to encourage authentic vocabulary practice
After this initial learning activity to make students aware of their prior knowledge, albeit in another language than English, students with partners were then given a partially created map of a small urban environment.
Students were instructed to discuss with a partner and add pictures and labels of locations and features to this map to show what an urban environment was like and to maybe make this urban environment better to live in. Students were also supplied with copies of word clouds to help with spelling and remembering features of cities (described in part 2).
Students were then given a word bank with language to describe location and asked to write 5 "starter" sentences that could help them describe locations in their cities to others.
Increasing engagement through a barrier game
Then came the game-like aspect. Student pairs were paired off with other student pairs, a barrier was placed between them, and they were challenged to recreate each others' maps based on verbal descriptions on a new blank map. Before starting, we also discussed how to ask clarifying questions.
Overall students seemed to enjoy this activity and they did practice describing location using vocabulary they had already identified as important when discussing urban environments. As the unit continues we will keep using this vocabulary and descriptive language as students discuss what should be modified in urban environments, Phnom Penh in particular, to make them more liveable.
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