BESA CORNER
This month, in our ongoing feature highlighting the work of members of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, we hear from language specialists ACROSS CULTURES; and primary online safety experts NATTERHUB.
One school, many languages: making languages matter
Comment by IVA MITEVA, EAL teacher and EAL specialist with Learning Village by Across Cultures
How often do you hear these words in a school playground? And actually, not just in the playground…do you know which languages these are from? Have a guess!
(Here are the answers: Mandarin, Ukrainian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Urdu, Polish) When you walk around your school, I bet you can hear words, phrases (and lessons too!) whispered or spoken out loud in different
languages in the corridors, the lunch hall, or the classroom (if you listen really carefully!).
In a school where I worked as Head of EAL (English as an Additional Language), we were proud to have about 20 languages spoken amongst our pupils. However, our challenge was in showcasing this huge language diversity and communicating that our pupils’ heritage is valued. We cared deeply about the wellbeing and happiness of everyone in the school, especially our new arrivals who spoke little or no English. We wanted to make everyone feel safe and welcome, so we took a new whole-school approach towards home languages. The initiative ‘Language of the Term’ was implemented and championed by the EAL department. At the time, we simply wanted to make languages matter and to celebrate them. Little did we know that our small project was to become so big and successful. The chosen language of the term was kept an absolute secret from everyone until the very day of the dedicated assembly at the beginning of each term. I actually had all languages written on notes, put in a box and I would choose one randomly the week before the assembly for the upcoming term. Then, the preparations would begin! Everyone would ask me questions - “What is it?” “Have you chosen it?” “Can you tell us?” The build-up and anticipation for the assembly was unreal and half the fun, so I would not give in! In the assembly, clues were gradually revealed with interesting facts about the language and the country until someone would shout their guess.
I cannot even begin to describe the surprise, happiness and pride those native-speaking pupils felt at that moment, when the ‘Language of the Term’ announced was all too familiar to them (as they did not know either). Their faces just lit up. We would give them badges to wear for the whole term which could be created and designed online. Ours said ‘I speak the Language of the Term’.
Those pupils enjoyed recording videos with words and phrases to teach us all, we made displays and posters and the whole school was buzzing. Parents also got involved with themed lunches and sharing traditional recipes with the lunch ladies (who were so excited and happy to cook them!).
However, the most important thing was that teachers were stimulated with ways to intertwine the language of the term with their lessons at their own pace. Some started by merely highlighting it, others took the extra step to celebrate it, and the bravest teachers threw themselves wholeheartedly into the project, thinking of creative ways to start using pupils’ home languages in their lessons.
We found Learning Village to be a great way to create our own flashcards and scaffolded worksheets, which were ready to print. Teachers could include translations to encourage the use of home languages, so this was easy and enjoyable to do in class. ‘Language of the Term’ was an innovative way for our school to integrate home languages. It was a huge success for us, and proved to be a great whole-school approach to valuing pupils’ home languages. Try it…it is so rewarding!
u
https://www.learningvillage.net/ u
https://www.axcultures.com/
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www.education-today.co.uk
Unlocking online safety: how primary school teachers can harness the power of questioning
With greater emphasis on online safety in the DfE updates to ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSiE) guidance, it’s an opportune time for teachers to learn about pupils’ digital preferences and experiences. It is possible to learn so much from children through relevant questioning. On Safer Internet Day, Natterhub
released its annual data report based on poll and quiz results from 39,000+ pupils using its online safety platform worldwide. They sought to enrich this anonymous data by backing a small-scale research project led by a Natterhub intern. The project involved teaching online safety lessons in a school environment and listening to children’s experiences in face-to- face discussions.
Case study: online safety research project
Nafferton Primary School kindly granted Trainee Psychologist, Hannah East, approval to carry out an online safety research project with 100+ pupils, in association with Natterhub. With no formal teaching experience and a keen interest in child psychology, Hannah led classes with different year groups to discuss online safety topics. Using Natterhub’s school platform, she was able to structure lessons that encouraged conversation and allowed pupils to get ‘hands on’ with the platform’s interactive content such as quizzes and polls.
Online safety concerns by age
Her findings highlight just how much we can learn by asking children relevant questions about their digital lives. Teachers rarely get the opportunity to pose similar scenarios to different year groups, something Hannah was able to exercise as part of the project, and so her analysis of online concerns has provided an interesting timeline that begins (aged 4-7) with a focus on the devices themselves such as breakages, batteries running out etc. turning to heavy concerns for children aged 9+. They feared hacking, bad language, stalking and bullying alongside worries about their personal data and being made fun of.
This fast-moving timeline of children’s concerns make it clear as to why online safety teaching is critical in primary schools. Young people are getting hands-on with devices before they even understand the concept of the world wide web.
The impact of being online
The majority of children said that they participate in online gaming, although not a surprising finding, it suggests that this desirable pastime is attracting children into shared digital spaces. The 9–10-year-olds reported encountering strangers online at least once a week through gaming. Revealing that many of the unknown participants are often from different countries.
Targeted by the big tech brands to desire games and spend lots of time on them makes it difficult for children to manage screen time and their emotional response to gameplay. In class discussions, Hannah found that 77% of 10-11 year olds were surprised at how long they’d spent on a device and that they were experiencing some adverse effects of using technology, with 91% saying they had felt angry and frustrated when gaming whilst 83% of 9-10 year olds were aware of someone who has experienced online bullying.
The primary [school] issue
Although the younger children represented in this report were seemingly less emotionally affected by technology, it was clear they have an awareness of devices and in some cases, access to them. With 68% of 6–7-year-olds saying they have chatted online, it suggests that they have at least ‘borrowed’ a device to be able to do this. When pupils aged 10- 11 were asked how many devices they have access to at home, the results found that there were 2-5 devices per pupil on average and around 20 devices in the household.
The key to impactful online safety teaching is to use age-appropriate questioning that engages pupils and lifts the lid on their real-life digital experiences. And with nursery/pre-school children regularly swiping across screens, it is never too early to begin teaching them to thrive online.
u
https://natterhub.com/forschool September 2023
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