[eal-bilingual] Teaching literacy skills through sharing stories

From: "Nicola Davies" <ndavies00 at hotmail.com>

One of my teachers is looking for a resource to use with P1 pupils who are 
learning initial sounds. The school does not use a reading scheme as such 
and she would like to identify a story context around which she can 
structure discussion and a whole range of other pre and early literacy 
activites, including initial sounds, for the bilingual and monolingual 
learners in her groups. She has a couple ideas involving adapting well known 
tales for this purpose but it would be great to find something new and 
lively that we could also recommend to other schools.

Thanks
Luan

>From: "Nicola Davies" <ndavies00 at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic 
>andlinguistic minorities <eal-bilingual at lists.becta.org.uk>
>To: "'For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic 
>andlinguisticminorities'" <eal-bilingual at lists.becta.org.uk>
>Subject: RE: [eal-bilingual] EAL and assessment
>Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:35:10 +0100
>
>This is interesting Catharine.
>A couple of queries - what do you count as 2/3 sublevel progress for EAL
>early stage learners on LIC as the NC has the handy a, b c's but LIC has
>only two subdivisions for both steps and L1?
>
>Secondly, wouldn't your arguments still hold true if there was no LIC but
>simply the 'regular' NC English? Especially as presumably the majority of
>your learners are beyond L1 Secure when they join you.  So aren't you 
>really
>saying that we are better off just using the English National Curriculum 
>for
>everyone and 'doing' EAL through informed practice?
>
>I can see that there is an argument for this. Any form of EAL steps/stages
>etc was always made difficult because it was so closely bound up with
>funding and so often became the kind of admin exercise you describe. But
>surely assessment is about informing teaching and learning? So I think I
>would argue for something that would help that process. One thing about
>assessment is surely that it helps us to 'see' things that we wouldn't
>otherwise be aware of and therefore a band scale type of assessment would 
>be
>really helpful in teachers' professional development.
>
>Nicola
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
>[mailto:eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of CATHARINE
>DRIVER
>Sent: 13 September 2007 22:49
>To: For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic and
>linguisticminorities
>Subject: RE: [eal-bilingual] EAL and assessment
>
>I 've been thinking about this EAL assessment discussion for a few days
>[whilst in the middle of doing a lot of it myself at the start of term]
>   Surely LIC serves a useful purpose in providing a universal, national,
>summative statement about any child's ability in the skills of English. Of
>course it doesn't reflect all I need to know as an EAL teacher about a
>student's potential, development needs etc, but it's the best method we 
>have
>for communicating to all teachers across a large secondary school what the
>general linguistic profile of a class or group is.
>   Our school Assessment Manager programme now automatically provides a
>recent English assessment [1T, 1S, 2c,  2b etc ] alongside all subject
>baseline data. So all teachers can plan for appropriate support without
>needing specialist advice all the time.
>   I can also monitor progress of students using the the sub levels just as
>other subject areas do. It gives me credibility as a HOD to be able to
>evidence progress just as they do, not using a separate system. I can also
>demonstrate to other HODs that EAL learners' rates of progress are usually
>at the upper end of the expected number of levels across a key stage. When
>they see the evidence, they raise their expectations and targets
>accordingly. With the old stages none of this was possible. Students stuck
>on stage 3 for ages and we couldn't show progress.
>
>   We deal with the issue of distinctive EAL needs through talk about 
>grammar
>for writing, and formative assessment for advanced bilingual learners. This
>is done through looking at books, diagnostic marking frames, departmental
>discussions etc. I agree that Australian style band scales would also be
>useful here, but we manage without.
>
>   I am sure that the issue is different in Primary schools, but in my 80%
>EAL school I wouldn't have it any other way now. I'd certainly have no time
>for teaching if I had to provide an EAL stage for the whole school. By 
>using
>LIC the English Dept can also share the burden of summative assessment [and
>we can discuss its limitations jointly too ]
>
>   Catharine
>
>
>

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