Sydney Boys High School

1
Sydney Boys High School

• About 1100 students
• 80 NESB
• Selective
• 1 in 3 Chinese
• 20 ESL
• Year 7 2002 180, 156 NESB, 33 3-7 yrs 3 1-3
  yrs

2
LBOTE population 1997-2002
3
French and English class

• On selective schools test English performance,
  felt to be needy
• Chinese 20
• Korean 3
• Vietnamese 3
• Tamil and other 4
• Native speakers 0
• Speaking English or in Australia less than 5
  years 6

4
English class (Walles)

• Considered a high flier group
• Chinese 14
• Korean 3
• Vietnamese 3
• Hindi and other 6
• Native speakers 3
• Speaking English or in Australia less than 5
  years 5

5
The English lessons

• Both classes were working on Narrative
• Both used the cut-up Fire Spirit story to
  explore the structure of narrative
• Both were required to master metalanguage for
  talking about narrative
• Both were working towards writing a major
  narrative
• In Ms Walless class the concept of narrative
  voice was explored a little more deeply
• Ms Rosss class is early in the lesson sequence,
  Ms Walless a little later

6
Something was happening

• They were clearly good lessons. Handover was
  occurring, metalanguage being used,
• meta-awareness evidenced.
• But exactly what was going on in these classes?

7
That is what we set out to discover

• How can the competent adult lend consciousness
  to a child who does not have it on his own?
  What is it that makes possible this implanting of
  vicarious consciousness in the child by his adult
  tutor? It is as if there were kind of
  scaffolding erected for the learner by the tutor.
  But how?
• -- Jerome Bruner (1986)

8
More formally we were interested in

• Meta-awareness of learning how to learn and
  role of meta-language in learning interaction
  between ESL and mainstream teachers in supporting
  meta-awareness

9
To explore this we

• Videoed lessons
• Looked at transcripts
• Looked at work samples
• Examined the texts from which students were
  working

10
Come into Ms Rosss class

• Reducing 50 minutes to about five reveals a
  narrative structure in the lesson
• Orientation including a recapitulation of
  previous work
• The task itself provides the complications
• When the target text is revealed there is a
  climax
• In the final minutes Ms Ross and the ESL teacher
  provide a resolution and coda.

11
Could this narrative structure

• itself be a form of scaffolding?
• Note how metalanguage is foregrounded in the
  opening stage

12
Your job today

• ...is to try to put the story back together
  again.
• Concern for clear instructions

13
Students talk using metalanguage

• A Orientation, right? Youve got a complication
  complication is in the middle. This is in the
  middle. This should be in the middle Where in
  the middle? Lets just read it

14
Students talk

• B Ill give you a clue. Match the cuts!
• A They dont match!
• Only engagement with the text will lead to an
  answer

15
Teacher-student talk

• ESL Youre happy with those?
• Student reads to support his choices.
• ESL You disagree with him?
• Negotiating differences. Notice the body
  language and the student on the right has been
  in Australia only 2 years!

16
Resolution/Coda

• ESL if you actually turn that round the other
  way it still works
• Student yeah!
• ESL That could be something you talk about
  tomorrow I reckon youve got a good argument for
  the way youve done it
• Ms Ross and you could talk about then how long
  the orientation for your own stories should be

17
Observations on Ms Rosss lesson

• Designed-in scaffolding from the opening
  recapitulation and eliciting metalanguage through
  task (cut-up) involving a number of modalities.

• Centrality of text. Text united the whole
  exercise. Note how often students examined,
  argued from text to realise the metalinguistic
  through the concrete example before them

18
Observations on Ms Rosss lesson

• Scope for contingent scaffolding,
  student-to-student, teacher-to-student
• Possibility of independent exercise of judgment
  in group situation

• This made more so by the fact there was more than
  one possible story structure
• That fact emerged authentically in the course of
  the task not foreseen!

19
What we found

• Of necessity, Sydney Boys High has mainstreamed
  its ESL learners.
• Language teaching methodologies have generally
  accepted the notion that language teaching is
  more effective when learners are presented with
  meaningful language in context, and the
  integration of ESL learning with curriculum
  content is now broadly accepted as supportive of
  second language learning. (Gibbons 2002)

20
What we found

• We can think of each teacher as a discourse
  guide and each classroom as a discourse village,
  a small language outpost from which roads lead to
  larger communities of educated discourse
• teachers have to start from where the
  learners are, to use what they already know, and
  help them go back and forth across the bridge
  from everyday discourse into educated
  discourse. -- N Mercer The Guided Construction
  of Knowledge, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters 1995

21
What we found

• L Van Lier (1996)
• Recall that there are two sides to
  contingency a contextual anchoring which
  relates that which is said to that which is
  known, including that which has been said before,
  and an expectancy which encourages students to
  reach higher levels of functioning

22
What we found

• Contingent utterances, then, do a number of
  valuable things, among them
• They relate new material to known material
• They set up expectancies for what may come next
• They validate (value, respect) both preceding and
  next utterance
• They are never entirely predictable, nor entirely
  unpredictable
• They promote intersubjectivity
• They ensure continued attention

23
What we found

• L Van Lier (1996)
• careful reflection on and monitoring of how we
  interact with our students should assist us in
  developing ways of tactful teaching (van Manen
  1991), that is, the ability to act quickly,
  surely, confidently and appropriately in complex
  or delicate circumstances Tact cannot be
  planned, rather it is a mindfulness that permits
  us to act thoughtfully with children and young
  people. This is not something you can just learn
  and apply It has to become part of our way of
  working.

24
What we found

• The greatest benefit of the project for us was
  the opportunity it gave for careful reflection on
  and monitoring of how we interact with our
  students

25

26
The ESL teacher

• Assists mainstream teacher with input on unit of
  work needs of students linguistic, cultural
• Is watching and listening can act contingently
  with whole class, groups or individuals

27
The final result

• Independent learners ready for whatever
  challenges lie ahead
• Thanks to quality pedagogy including artfully
  designed scaffolding at every stage

28
Find more on the SBHS ESL site

• You can find a page on the scaffolding project at
  
• neilwhitfield.tripod.com/scaffolding.html