| 3: Key Resources / Approaches / Activities
As I have said earlier, diversity is at the heart of the curriculm. The suggested activities and resources that follow, therefore, need to be embedded in the course as a whole.
- Teachers’ and pupils’ own knowledge. This is a key resource. A guiding principle of our course is drawing on the knowledge and understandings that teachers and pupils themselves bring. I ask our trainees, therefore to ‘think themselves into their pupils’ minds’ by undertaking some of the speaking and listening, reading and writing tasks that pupils are typically asked to do.
- A personal language history. Trainees are asked write a personal language history. After some brief discussion and examples, they begin writing this ‘in class’, during a seminar. They then finish this at home, and write a commentary on how it felt to have to do this, and what they learned from this. This is a very valuable activity and many trainees produce their best reflective writing. It is also a powerful activity, and it needs, of course, to be approached with the same sensitivity as when asking pupils to do it. Some trainees are caught unawares by the unexpected feelings of pain or anger that the activity engenders. As well as some examples of my own and previous trainees’ writing, I use a unit from the English and Media Centre Key Stage 3 pack, which is excellent for getting discussion going.
- A culture collage. I got this idea from Basman Zora. This was something that she asked her pupils to do as a preparation for GCSE work on poems from different cultures. The concept of culture is foregrounded and the culture(s) of all pupils discussed. The aim is to show that we all belong to a culture and that many of us regard ourselves as being ‘bi-cultural’, as belonging to more than one cultural grouping, so that a girl can be British and a Muslim and an Arsenal supporter. It also promotes discussion of the view that some white British pupils may hold that they ‘have no culture’ (because, for example, they do not wear ‘special’ clothing like a kilt or salwar kameez) or that their culture is the norm to which others have to conform. It is also a way of validating the different cultural understandings that pupils bring and enabling them to draw on and make explicit reference to this in their learning.For example, young girls of Bangladeshi heritage wrote stories in which the heroine got married in church, dressed in white, and where everyone celebrated Christmas and Easter. In response to the teacher’s gentle probing, they said that they had not felt confident about referring to their own celebrations and traditions in their schoolwork. Which is not to say, of course, that the girls should not write about white weddings if that is what they wanted to do!
Planning for Diversity
As part of their ongoing planning, trainees are required to produce a class profile, on the basis of which they can plan to meet the needs of individuals or groups within a class. This is not just a matter of attainment or perceived ability but also of behaviour, EAL stage, particular strengths and aptitudes, social skills, disability and so on. Click on the link to see guidance on differentiation, originally taken from the BECTA site, although it is no longer available there.
An Assignment on Raising Achievement
- We ask our trainees to undertake some substantial reading of the research on achievement/ underachievement. They have to choose a particular focus andwrite a literature review. They then go on to write about a pupil (or a very small group of pupils) whom they teach and who is underachieving, or 'at risk' of underachieving in English, or who may be doing well but who, they feel, is capable of doing even better. They discuss the strategies they have used, and could use, to improve her or his attainment.
- Go to the Naldic site, Click on ITTSEAL and click on Models of Assignments and Assessments to see examples of various ITE providers’ assignments.
- Reading Across Cultures edited by Joan Goody and Phillip Yearwood on behalf of NATE’s Multicultural Committee. Published 2003by the London Borough of Greenwich and available from:
- Jubilee Books, Eltham green School, Middle Park Avenue, Eltham London SE9 5EQ. Tel: 020 8850 7676
- NATE, 50 Broadfield Road, Sheffield S8 OXJ.
Tel: 0114 255 5419
www.nate.org.uk
This is a wide-ranging and stimulating collection of reviews by teachers of multicultural books. “... we define multicultural books as literature from diverse cultures worldwide (with an emphasis on those cultures represented in our classroom and our multicultural society); cross cultural literature; and literature which portrays and explores aspects of a multicultural society.” (From the introduction). A straight read-through first is recommended as a powerful consciousness-raising exercise of the range of literature available.
- Particular support for bilinguals, with strong emphasis on oral work
- Structures put in place to support the ongoing learning of all pupils also support bilingual learners.
- Well-structured pair and group work – see the excellent Key Stage 3 materials for Literacy across the Curriculum 2001, Module 7: The Management of Group Talk. (Available online under ‘Publications and Resources’ at:http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3/) In particular, setting up permanent talk or response partners for all pupils enables bilingual pupils to gain especially helpful support in a way that does not draw attention to them.
- Who wants to be a millionaire? Build in thinking time when you ask a question and then don’t have hands up, so that you can direct questions more systematically around the room, and not have the just the ‘usual suspects’ responding. Pupils can redirect the question by nominating a friend, asking for a fifty /fifty choice or asking the class. This is a fun way of enabling everyone to participate, even if only symbolically at first.
- There are some excellent websites which deal clearly with the principles as well as the practicalities of teaching bilingual pupils.
- http://www.multiverse.ac.uk/
The topics covered are: race and ethnicity, social class, religious diversity, bilingual and multilingual matters, refugees and asylum seekers, travellers and Roma. Each topic has the following menu: key debates and ideas; legislation, policy and statistics; diverse communities; pupils’ perceptions; ITE pedagogy; parents and communities. There is also a glossary with “Definitions of commonly used terms in the field of diversity and achievement, with commentaries that include development and usage of the term described”. You can also download articles and chapters from books. An excellent site.
- http://www.naldic.org.uk/
A key site. This is the site for The National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum. The association’s aims are to provide a professional forum for: the teaching and learning of English as an additional language (EAL); raising the achievement of ethnic minority learners; supporting bilingualism; the development and understanding of this field of education. The ‘resources’ link gives easy access to key documents. The ITTSEAL link takes you to the ITE section.
- http://www.emaonline.org.uk/ema/
This site provides online support for ethnic minority attainment. There is a wonderful section on EAL and bilingual resources in 19 languages.
- http://www.britkid.org/
This site invites you to “hang out” with various children from ethnically diverse backgrounds. “The intended audience is young people who do not live or go to school in areas which are ethnically mixed, so I am aiming to engage and inform a group which is mostly not from minority ethnic groups themselves. Young people who have personal daily experience of multicultural Britain may find the site interesting, but it is not intended to address the details and complexities of those experiences.” There is also a section on ‘serious issues’ which presents useful information very clearly, e.g. a chart of the main UK language and religious groups, the numbers of minority ethnic groups in Britain and where they live, and so on. And a section on ‘Teachers’ stuff’, which discusses how you might use Britkid as an educational tool.
- http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/
This has links to work in the area of gender and achievement, ethnic minorities and gifted and talented, for instance. The links and publications button under ethnic minorities brings up the important ‘Aiming High’ publications in pdf.
Wells G Dialogic Inquiry in Education in Lee C and Smagorinsky P (2000)
Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Available online from Gordon Well’s webpage:
http://education.ucsc.edu/faculty/gwells
Blanchard J Out in the Open
Cambridge: CUP 1986
Sadly out of print but well worth borrowing from a library
Burgess T, Fox C & Goody J When the hurly-burly’s done
Perspectives on English Teaching 1
NATE 2002
 
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