A PYP teacher wants to know other schools’ approaches to teaching and learning additional language in IB schools. Here are the highlights from an ongoing conversation on LinkedIn:
John: “Circle time in the morning is my time whereby I will mix it with some good old fashioned EAL/ESL teaching (I believe that our children need to be given the necessary tools to communicate with if they are to fully benefit from the unit of inquiry) and some conceptualized questions to open up a discussion or to lead on from something that took place the previous day.
During our inquiry time we are constantly switching between the mother tongue and the additional language of instruction which is English… the children are able to make authentic connections to the real world through the use of their attained language skills rather than just pure memorization for the sake of passing a test.”
Serena: “I completely agree with you on helping kids to make authentic connections with what they learn, and I am trying every effort to do it in my classroom. What I am exploring right now is what is going to happen to teaching the language system itself , the spiral system within language which enables the kids to get the “basic core” of the language as beginners”.
John: “It’s very important that you are part of the planning meetings for a unit with which you will interact with. One approach that I use a lot is the conceptualized questions to open up a central idea. These have a grammatical structure to them that can help with the introduction of a language as well.
Serena: “The use of conceptualized questions is a great idea and I can generate a whole new unit just on Chinese writing system.”
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To read the entire conversation, visit here the PYP Educators LinkedIn page which a sub-group of the International Baccalaureate page.
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