[eal-bilingual] Teaching literacy skills through sharing stories

Hi Luan

Collaborative Learning has an extensive collection of story props and 
games in its archive. They were produced in teacher workshops in the 
1980s and 90s before the shutters went down on talk in the classroom. 
We have a catalogue online of some of them which we will send to you 
for free to inspire you to produce more. We are aiming to put more of 
these in digital form and because they are heavy on memory and there 
are copyright reasons with published stories we are more likely to 
disseminate them on CD rom rather than on the net. We are hoping to run 
workshops on story props and games again in the near future and since 
we prefer to organise the workshops with LA EMAS teams please contact 
us if you want us to run a workshop in your area. You can find online 
examples on 
www.collaborativelearning.org/foundationonline.html

Best wishes, Stuart

----Original Message----
From: robertsonhome at blueyonder.co.uk
Date: Sep 14, 2007 23:17 
To: "For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic 
andlinguistic
	minorities"<eal-bilingual at lists.becta.org.uk>
Subj: Re: [eal-bilingual] Teaching literacy skills through sharing 
stories

Story props.  Teacher tells simple repetitive stories, The Enormous 
Turnip, 
The Gingerbread Man etc., several times. Children then have the props 
and 
tell story to teacher, or each other, or to themselves in home 
language and 
in English. Extension; children make their own props and tell home 
culture 
stories, in home language and \English etc.We videoed our children 
doing 
this and lent them to children to take home.
For initial sounds, I think home made bingo games are excellent. Eg. 
players' boards with 6 or 9 squares, each square has a picture and 
beginning 
sound. Caller (teacher at first, then children) takes first calling 
card and 
reads sound, then counts 10 and shows calling card. This supports 
absolute 
beginners so everyone has an equal chance of winning, regardless of 
knowledge. Extension would be sounds without pictures. Bingo can be 
widely 
used; to learn character's names, to learn the events in a story etc., 
etc.
Christine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Janet Storey" <janet_storey at btinternet.com>
To: "For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic and 
linguisticminorities" <eal-bilingual at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 5:30 PM
Subject: Re: [eal-bilingual] Teaching literacy skills through sharing 
stories

> Hi Luan
>
>  I think that story telling is one of the best ways of extending 
language. 
> I did some work on this in a nursery as part of a Chartered Teacher 
> module. I think you take any well illustrated, language rich story 
and 
> find things within it to exploit.
>
>  Janet Storey ( East Lothian)
>
> Luan Porter <luan.porter at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  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"
>>Reply-To: For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic
>>andlinguistic minorities
>>To: "'For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic
>>andlinguisticminorities'"
>>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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Collaborative Learning Project, 17 Barford Street, London N1 0QB
Supporting a cooperative network of teaching professionals to develop and disseminate accessible teaching materials in all subject areas and for all ages.
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