«MCMC Conference» Meeting the Challenge of the Multicultural Classroom An EU collaborative project between Southwark (UK) and the Algarve (PT) Goldsmiths, University of London, New Academic Building, Room LG02 26 April Context and Decisions Objectives, Resources and planned activities We currently teach in Dog Kennel Hill Primary School where about 45% of the children fromReception to Year 6 speak English as an additional language. These children speak 44 other languages besides English. We chose to work with the Year 2 children because they best reflect the rich, diverse cultural and linguistic population of our school. The 4th and 5th sessions of the CPD module at Goldsmiths College helped us to : critically analyse the practice of teachers as intercultural agents in the classroom and in the school as a whole apply the principle of inclusion by planning creative approaches to learning for all the children that need support make sure that we include active and kinaesthetic approaches to learning. Methodology The task was to enable EAL pupils to access a new story with unfamiliar settings, events and language. This was done by: analysing the language demands required in order to understand the text teachers working together to plan activities to support an unfamiliar setting in the story making props and visual resources to stimulate involvement in the story and aid memory of events and key characters encouraging children to role play key parts of the story using appropriate language adults modelling the hot seating of characters ‘role on the wall’ activities to describe characters’ appearance and feelings, including reasons for actions in the story making up a song with a familiar tune to help retell the story República Checa Turquia Outcomes and Impact on learning School: Dog Kennel Hill School Teachers:Marion Cranmer, Jackie Davey, Wayne Cooper, Fatima Duerden and Adeola Soyinka Year groups taught: Years 2, MFL and Ethnic Minority Achievement Support A writing task showed that the children had remembered the sequence of events in the story. Over two weeks later, a child used the specific vocabulary ‘allotment’ to describe an area she had seen during a family outing. This showed that the child had learnt and understood the concept of ‘allotment’ and added this to her bank of vocabulary. Watching peers role play enabled EAL children to suggest reasons for character actions and their impact on the story. This contributed to the ‘role on the wall’ activity. The children were able to distinguish the features, appearance and facial expressions of characters, as well as behaviour, attitudes and emotions. Role play of specific scenes gave children the confidence to retell parts of the story and improvise what characters might have said. Children wrote that a character showed different emotions in specific parts of the story. Dressing up for role play helped EAL children to recall a lot of detail about the clothing and accessories of the main character, for example ‘pea ring stuck on her finger’, ‘pea scarf on her hair’ and ‘the curly, whirly spirals’ of the character’s hair. Reflection and future developments Our attendance and participation during the recent CPD module has primarily encouraged us to think about the way teachers serve as intercultural agents in multi-ethnic and multilingual settings. We have become more aware of the complexities, cultural barriers and other challenges facing children from different cultures when learning alongside their monolingual English-speaking peers. This module has encouraged us to include more active and collaborative learning in our teaching. All through the six sessions there have been ample opprtunities to share good practice to support children’s learning. Moreover the entire MCMC two-year project has improved the quality of our teaching with the help of job shadowing experiences with our Algarve partners, offering opportunities to share ideas, expertise and practice with colleagues in a variety of multicultural settings.