Developing Skills

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Developing Skills

• Trainees, parents and children learning together
  at Henry Maynard Infants School

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Background to the school

• Socially, ethnically, culturally, linguistically
  diverse
• Large, well established third generation
• mainly Punjabi speaking Pakistani community
• More recently arrived families of Turkish,
  African and East European origin
• Links with UEL
• Became a training school in 2001 with an agenda
  to grow teachers within and for the local
  community

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Background to the project

• History of running parent literacy and numeracy
  classes
• Pressure from our Turkish mums for beginner
  English conversation classes
• NQT national surveys flag up EAL
• Analysis of our school data indicated
  underachievement of Turkish children

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Opportunity Knocks

• UEL invitation to take part in Dual Language
  research project group
• Through a friend I met a bilingual teaching
  assistant (Mary) interested in doing something
  for the Turkish community.

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Aims of the project for the parents

• To develop their conversational skills
• To gain some understanding of how to support
  their children learning English
• To feel part of the school
• To meet socially and make friends

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Aims of the project for the trainees

• To develop their understanding of working in
  partnership with parents
• To develop their understanding of factors which
  affect childrens learning
• To have the opportunity to work on producing
  materials for children with EAL
• 1.1 1.4 1.5 2.2 2.4 3.1.3
  3.2.5 3.3.1 3.3.5 3.3.6 3.3.14

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Aims of the project for our Turkish children

• Opportunity to share their culture and language
  with others raised self esteem
• Appropriate reading materials to be produced
• Parents will be better prepared to support their
  learning

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Aims of the project for the school

• Celebration of diversity
• Opportunity to develop a resource bank of
  materials to support children with EAL
• Creative opportunity for all

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Outline of the project

• 9 Turkish parents, the 9 trainees, Mary and
  myself met weekly for a term to produce resources
  for school
• Their children joined us for the last half hour
  to trial our resources/ sing with us/ talk about
  school
• The school as a whole focused on learning Turkish
  phrases and finding out about Turkish culture
• A Turkish week was held at the end to celebrate
  the success of the project

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What happened next?

• The first meeting apprehensions and inhibitions
  parents and trainees
• The second meeting lift off! Small group work,
  conversation, confidence
• The third onwards parents rule OK - the word
  book, the hodjia story, traditional rhymes, all
  singing all dancing.

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Celebration!!!

• The final week of the project included a belly
  dancing workshop, a display of resources, an ICT
  training session on educational websites and a
  massive cook-in.

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The massive cook-in

• turkish cooking.WMV

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Evaluation-Impact on the parents and their
children

• Social group formed
• Relationship with school mutual respect
• Confident enough to enrol for classes
• Raised self esteem
• Benefited from parents learning
• Raised attainment

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Evaluation- Impact on the trainees

• More understanding of and empathy for the needs
  of children with EAL reflected in planning,
  awareness of learning styles, resources
• Developed an understanding of the importance of
  using dual language materials for all children
• Opportunity to make a contribution to the life of
  the school
• End of training/NQT evaluations indicated they
  felt well prepared to teach children with EAL

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Impact on the school

• Embedded in the annual cycle of the school
• ESOL classes
• Parental involvement
• Employment of trainees who know what our school
  is about