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

LBOTE population 1997-2002

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

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

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 Walles’s class the concept of “narrative voice”

was explored a little more deeply Ms Ross’s class is early in the lesson sequence, Ms

Walles’s a little later

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?

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)

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

To explore this we…

Videoed lessons Looked at transcripts Looked at work

samples Examined the texts

from which students were working

Come into Ms Ross’s 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”.

Could this “narrative structure…”

…itself be a form of scaffolding?

Note how “metalanguage” is foregrounded in the opening

stage…

“Your job today…

...is to try to put the story back together again.”

Concern for clear instructions…

Students’ talk: using metalanguage…

A: Orientation, right? You’ve got a complication … complication is in the

middle. This is in the middle. This should be in the middle… Where in

the middle? Let’s just read it…

Students’ talk

B: I’ll give you a clue. Match the cuts!

A: They don’t match!

Only engagement with the text will lead to an answer…

Teacher-student talk

ESL: You’re 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!

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 you’ve got a good argument for the way you’ve

done it…

Ms Ross: …and you could talk about then how long the orientation for your own stories should be…

Observations on Ms Ross’s 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

Observations on Ms Ross’s 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!

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)

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

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…

What we found…

“… Contingent utterances, then, do a number of valuable things, among them:

1. They relate new material to known material2. They set up expectancies for what may come next

3. They validate (value, respect) both preceding and next utterance

4. They are never entirely predictable, nor entirely unpredictable

5. They promote intersubjectivity6. They ensure continued attention”

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.”

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…

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

The final result…

Independent learners ready for whatever challenges lie ahead

Thanks to quality pedagogy including artfully designed scaffolding at every stage

Find more on the SBHS ESL site

You can find a page on the scaffolding project at

neilwhitfield.tripod.com/scaffolding.html