Taught badly, SPaG could be dry, and fail to enthuse children......so......let’s heed the advice that this person has left us...
Listening for Literacy for EAL students
So...what are the implications for us and SPaG? Let children hear recordings to appreciate the pauses, intonation, emphasis, and expression needed to really bring SPaG alive. Give children kudos for performing text out loud. ‘Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.’ Maya Angelou Maya Angelou "Her voice slid in and curved down through and over the words. She was nearly singing." As she relates it, the turning point in Angelou’s life came when she heard her teacher, Mrs Flowers, read from Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities:
Implications for EAL students much smaller store of listening and speaking knowledge rhythm of English schwa crucial repeated listening at school at home
Implications for EAL students While non-EAL students are reapplying their listening and speaking store of English language which they have acquired before tackling the reading process EAL students have a much smaller store of listening & speaking knowledge on which to base their pronunciation, intonation and expression which makes it crucial for them to have access to repeated listening at school and at home
What kind of Listening?
Short fiction
models of reading by staff – so we involve staff from different departments ( highlighting literacy to them) enhances comprehension
Make into a role play
Songs for curricular links with poetry grammar exercises turning into role-plays Need to be chosen carefully
Headphones learning off-by-heart catch them out
most EAL students are not hamstrung by having to feel hip/cool about the latest sounds
Other texts
Link to in-class work by adapting a text
PUT IN SCIENCE or HISTORY TOPIC
On the hoof improvisation when something crops up in a lesson
MOBILE PHONE and piece of text from exercise book