English Language Assistants professional development (ELA)

A teacher and a teacher aide from our school are part of a professional development programme called English Language Assistants (ELA). This programme provides training and professional development for teacher aides who are providing English language support to ESOL funded students, international students, new learners of English, new migrants and other students in need of English language support. The teacher aides are supported by a co-ordinating teacher.

The ELA programme was developed and written by Jannie van Hees, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland. The ELA course consists of 6 whole day workshops, one a month, 5 school visits, inter-workshop tasks and a morning for overall course evaluation and graduation.

The six workshops include the topics of language assistant effectiveness, developing and enriching concepts and language (first principles), developing and enriching concepts and language with a dual language student, scaffolding for language, effective reading to and with students and effective ways to develop students' writing.

The ELAs share their inter-workshop tasks with each other and discuss ideas. They look at new resources and learn many new skills and strategies to assist English language learners with their oracy and literacy development.

The co-ordinating teachers support the teacher aides in their learning and together they form the ELA team. The ELA team has a vital role in sharing information and including the whole school in this professional development programme.

Our co-ordinating teacher and teacher aide discuss the information transfer activity and learn how to use it with English language learners.

Awards! Yeah!

Madhu's special moment. Madhu won an award for being an outstanding learner. Madhu has a home tutor and learns English with them for an hour, once a week. He is learning to read and write in English.

Here is Madhu with Sue Thompson receiving his award at the ceremony at Otago Polytechnic.

Our conversation group won an award for being a group of outstanding learners. Here we are receiving our award at the ceremony. We felt very proud and happy. Some of our group were not able to come because they were working or had family commitments but we thought of them when we received the award. We will tell them all about the special evening at our next conversation class. We have a lot of things to talk about.

Adult Learners' Week special evening

Adult Learners' Week was an exciting week for our conversation class. On Thursday night we went to a special evening held at Otago Polytechnic in the Technique Restaurant. Sara and James wore their traditional Korean costume and looked wonderful. Rob, Rachel, Sara, Madhu and James are enjoying the time we had for drinks and nibbles.

Lysiane and Sara look very beautiful. Sara is wearing her Hanbok, a traditional Korean costume.

Yun Jing and James wanted to have their photograph taken together. James is wearing a traditional Korean jacket. He looks very smart in this jacket.

We chatted for a while and took photos and listened to a band playing for our entertainment. We had to sit down for the special ceremony when we heard a short speech about the background of Adult Learners' Week given by Charles Pearce. We also listened to the guest speaker, Sue Thompson from Otago Polytechnic.

Farewell to Adam

Adam is returning to Malaysia with his family so his class had a shared lunch to say goodbye to him.

Adam's friends are sad that he is leaving but they will use email to keep in touch with him when he is in Malaysia.

We had a delicious shared lunch and everyone took turns to choose some food. We all liked the chocolate cake.

Look at all the yummy food we had to eat. Mmmmmmmm.

Farewell lunch for Akif

Akif and his family have returned to live in Malaysia. We are sad that they had to leave our school but know that they are excited about returning to Malaysia to see their family and friends.

We had a shared farewell lunch for Akif.

Room 10 had a table full of delicious food for our shared lunch - what lucky children - so many yummy things to choose from. Sometimes it was hard to decide what to take to eat. We all sat around the table and shared the food and chatted with each other. This was a special lunch to say goodbye to Akif.

Welcome Aakeef and farewell to Akif!

We are pleased that Aakeef has come to our school. Aakeef came from Malaysia to live in Dunedin earlier in the year. He is now in Room 10.

Here is Aakeef with some of his new class mates. They are having a shared lunch to say farewell to Akif who is leaving us to return to Malaysia with his family.

More duality maps

Language is culture and culture is language

We are so lucky in our school because we learn from each other as we share our cultures.

Lei shared a lot about her culture and made a duality map about Tonga and New Zealand.

When Lei is in Tonga she wears summer clothes nearly all the time because it is hotter than it is in Dunedin.

Lei showed us what the Tongan flag looks like.

She also told us about the fruit that she eats in Tonga.

Lei showed us about Tongan dancing and told us how, when she is in Tonga, she loves to sing songs with her Grandma. her Grandma also tells her lots of stories.

Dual culture and dual language learners always have at least two perspectives on life.

They have two languages and two ways of expressing words and ideas.

Duality maps

Sarah is showing the lovely duality map she has made.

Her duality map is about Tonga and New Zealand and she has told us interesting information about food, clothes, housing, games and life in general.

Much of the information Sarah knew herself, but she spoke to her parents and looked for pictures on the internet and in travel brochures.

Why is it valuable to make a duality map?

- It enables self pride in one's own culture.

- It gives everyone an awareness of other cultures and personal experiences.

- Communication links were established between children of similar nationalities, students of different nationalities and families and school.

Ahmad felt very proud of his duality map and was happy to share his knowledge of Malaysia and his life in Malaysia with his friends and teachers.

His map looks fantastic doesn't it?

Ainni shared a lot of information about Malaysia too. She had great fun gathering the information for her duality map and she talked to her parents about lots of things. She noticed some similarities and some differences between New Zealand and Malaysia. Her completed map looks wonderful doesn't it?

Grace spent a long time discussing the making of her duality map with her mother and sisters. She made some notes on paper and brought them to school and then decided how to construct her map. She used pictures from the internet, magazines and travel brochures. Grace include a lot of details about her country and culture on her duality map.

She is particularly fond of some of the foods from her culture and enjoys it when they are cooked in New Zealand.

Grace's finished map looks fantastic and it is full of interesting information.