Immersion in Bilingual Education
Footscray Primary School
Chau Cong, Philip Fox, Ken Schmack
This presentation was part of the 2011 DEECD Innovation Showcase on 13 May.
This podcast is brought to you by the Department Of Education and Early Childhood
Development, Victoria.
Speaker 1:
Today we have a presentation from Footscray Primary School. At Footscray
Primary School we’ve got Chau, Phillip, Ken, and Tammas and Tia -two
students at the school - and they’re going to talk to us about an initiative
they’ve had in their school called Achieving International Mindedness. And
their project’s about connecting Primary Years Programs to bilingual learning.
So what I would like for you to do is give a warm welcome to the staff and
students at Footscray Primary School. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Mark. My name is Philip Fox - I’m the new principal at Footscray
Primary School. So, I haven’t been there very long, so I feel very fortunate to
have arrived at a school which really does have strong foundations within the
school in terms of building this idea of intercultural understanding, but also
international mindedness. So I just wanted to really just introduce Ken
Schmack, who is our acting assistant principal and also Chau who are really
going to go in depth today about the connections that we have built between
our bilingual immersion program and also our primary years program as well,
which is the basis of our enquiry based units at Footscray. When I first
arrived I looked at the mission statement and I suppose it gets us to raise
many questions. Mission statements are great things, and it really gets you
to ask questions - what are we really doing at the school in terms of building
this idea of international mindedness? How are we encouraging our students
to be active and compassionate and respectful lifelong learners? So it gets
you to really question in terms of what’s happening at the school to really do
this. And as I mentioned Ken and Chau will actually unpack that with us this
morning.
Just to tell you a little bit about the school. Footscray Primary School is one
of the oldest schools in the western region. It celebrated its 150 years last
year. It has a student population of 219 so we’re a fairly small community,
but potentially a growing school. 57 of those children this year are Prep
children. So we could have an interesting - I think over the next 2 to 3 years
most of our children, or most of our population will be in the early years. It’s a
changing demographic so a lot of people are moving into the area, which
really is a diverse population, both culturally but also socio-economically as
well. So we’ve got a whole cross section within our community. We have a
sister school relationship with Phuoc Tien Primary School in Nha Trang. This
year we have 9 students and 5 teachers visiting the school. And that will
happen at the end of term 3.
And we have an international curriculum, so it’s accredited through the
International Baccalaureate so and we are running a primary years program.
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And as well as that, we have our Vietnamese bilingual program which has
been running for some years now at the school. And I think the key thing that
I’ve noticed in my short time there is the strong connections that have been
built between both these programs, so our Vietnamese bilingual program’s
not separate from our classroom enquiry based programs as well. So there’s
been some really strong connections built. Chau was one of our literacy
coaches, so she has attended a lot of professional development in that area.
So if you walk into our bilingual room you would see many things that you
would see in a normal classroom, such as the classroom library, also the
teaching of comprehension - the 6 key strategies that we have been focusing
on with our students - are also taught in the Vietnamese program. One thing
that we’re looking at is how we can continue to explore and upgrade our
curriculum for 21st century learning. And that’s where were examining at the
moment. And it think through today’s presentation and our understanding of
the primary years program, but also the bilingual program we’ll see that there
are many things embedded in our curriculum that’s already achieving that. I
won’t talk anymore, I’ll hand over to Ken Schmack who is going to talk about
the primary years program. So, thank you.
Speaker 3:
I’m not going to read this slide to you because I think it’s pretty clear, but that
photo I’ll talk about. On the left is one of parents coming in as an expert
visitor, and on the right is a picture of one of our science incursions.
The PYP promotes the education of the whole person, emphasizing
intellectual, personal, emotional and social growth through all domains of
knowledge leading to a life of active responsible citizenship. At its heart there
is a commitment to structured enquiry as the leading vehicle for lifelong
learning.
6 trans-disciplinary themes provide the framework for the
exploration of knowledge. Teachers and students are guided by these
themes as they design units of work for exploration and study.
Students explore subject areas through these themes, often in ways that
transcend conventional subject boundaries. In the process they develop an
understanding of important concepts, acquire essential skills and knowledge,
develop particular attitudes and learn to take socially responsible action.
The philosophy of the PYP is expressed in a series of desired attributes and
traits that characterise students with an international perspective. Taken
together they create a profile of PYP students. These values infuse all
elements of the PYP.
Alongside the curriculum, students are explicitly taught to practise certain
attitudes. These help to define a person who is a responsible citizen of the
local and the world community. And the student should demonstrate
tolerance, respect, integrity, independence, enthusiasm, empathy, curiosity,
creativity, co-operation, confidence, commitment and appreciation. The
PYP’s fundamental concepts are articulated as key questions, and they drive
the enquiry process. Each question is comprehensive and integrates many
ideas. And they answer the questions; what is it like? How does it work?
Why is it like it is? How is it changing? How is it connected to other things?
What are the points of view? What is our responsibility? How do we know?
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Enquiry-based learning aims to provide students with skills that are
foundations for lifelong learning. Thinking skills include acquisition of
knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation,
dialectical thought, meta-cognition.
Social skills include accepting
responsibility, respecting others, co-operating, resolving conflict, group
decision-making and adopting a variety of group roles. Communication skills
are listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, presenting and non-verbal
communication. Self-management skills are gross motor skills, fine motor
skills, spacial awareness, organisation, time management, safety, healthy life
style, codes of behaviours and informed choices. Research skills are
formulating questions, observing, planning, collecting data, recording data,
organising the data, interpreting the data and presenting the data research.
And one of the most important elements of the PYP is that everyone should
be taking action. And there’s just a couple of photos there from one of my
grades a few years ago with some of the action that they took. The PYP
recognises that educating students in a set of isolated subject areas while
necessary is not sufficient. Of equal importance is the need to acquire skills
in context and to explore content that is relevant to students and transcends
the boundaries of the traditional subjects. Hence students of the PYP study
units of enquiry within each of the following 6 trans-disciplinary themes and
each year the students study these very 6 trans-disciplinary themes, and they
are built upon.
At the beginning of an enquiry unit, students are provided with provocations,
experiences and opportunities to develop a curiosity about the central idea.
This is called the immersion stage. Activities might include excursions, multiliteracy discoveries, hands-on experiences and analysis of artefacts. This
time is an opportunity for teachers to find out what students already know to
inform future teaching. This is known as formative assessment. Students
are encouraged to ask questions related to the central idea, which are used
to guide the learning experiences throughout the unit. Once questions have
been raised, students then embark on the journey of finding out and sorting
out. This is the time for teachers to support students in the acquisition of
certain skills, concepts, attitudes and knowledge.
Towards the end of a unit of enquiry, students will complete a summative
assessment task, which is an opportunity for the students to show what skills,
concepts and knowledge they have developed throughout the unit. These
tasks might include open-ended tasks, dioramas, detailed posters, books,
mind maps, flow charts, verbal presentations, debates, podcasts, and the list
goes on. Throughout and beyond the units of enquiry, students are
encouraged to take action. The action should be student initiated and stems
from a successful enquiry. In past units this action has included treeplanting, rubbish pickups, recycling campaigns, seeking out family members
to learn about personal histories and finding and sharing newspaper articles.
So it can be very basic or it can be a very complicated action. Throughout
and at the end of every unit students are guided in self and peer reflection.
This encourages students to think critically and reflect on their acquisition of
the 5 essential elements.
Parents make the learner profile part of the home life by modelling
behaviours and making the language of the learner profile explicit. Parents
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are often a fantastic resource and can be expert visitors in the classroom.
They are also welcome on excursions. Parents are encouraged to assist
their children in contributing to the artefact or the action table. Objects from
home can really stimulate classroom discussion and further develop the
enquiry. Parents are invited to the celebration of learning that happens at the
end of each unit of enquiry. These take place during the day and are a great
way to share their children’s successes in an exciting setting.
Talking about the sorts of enquiries that are happening at school really
motivates students to find out more. Parents encourage their children to ask
questions and the parents and the children try to find the answers together.
Parents read books that relate to the unit of enquiry with their children, who
bring these books to school to share with the class. And one of the biggest
things that they do, I think, is to encourage their children to take action.
Parents help their children realise that the way they act really does influence
the way others feel, think and act. They can make a difference. I would like
to hand over to Chau.
Speaker 4:
Thank you, Ken. My part is about the bilingual program at Footscray Primary
School, and a bit of history of the bilingual program and how we embark on
new challenges when we link with the Primary Years Program of the
international baccalaureate. The Vietnamese program at Footscray Primary
School has a long history - it started in the late 1980’s when the school
provided Vietnamese staff for support for a large number of Vietnamese
students in the school. In recent years that number has dropped dramatically
but the number of bilingual students has raised too. In other words the
bilingual program has changed over the years. We become a very deep
language program. Its focus is on language teaching and learning and also
on cultural awareness. From 2005 the school adapt the PYP program and
the bilingual program also embarked on a big challenge. The challenge for
us now is to maintain a cohesiveness between the bilingual lessons - the
bilingual classroom - and the mainstream classroom. After a long journey
growing year by year, level by level, this year is the first year that Footscray
Primary School has a whole school program, we have a prep to six program,
it’s exciting. The lessons are closely planned with the classroom teachers, in
terms of literacy, numeracy and the unit of enquiries. The bilingual program,
the main focus of the bilingual program is on literacy. And along with many of
the western metropolitan region initiatives, we adapt a lot of English literacy
concept into bilingual lesson. They can be the bilingual classroom library, the
whole part, whole model of literacy block, the independent reading and
conferring with 3/4 students and above, the contextualising of learning of
literacy through the unit of enquiries, the using of E-learning methods such as
the interactive whiteboard, the internet, E-readers and E-books in
Vietnamese, languages online games to make software not only from the
teachers to make game for the student but for student to make game for
themselves, and video of oral presentation, and the list goes on.
Oh, sorry, I’ll go back to these pictures; there’s a few pictures of our bilingual
classroom. On the top row, on the left, is a picture of our bilingual library - a
part of it - and you can see on the top are, basket of books in level, so the
student can select a book of their choice to read during independent reading
time. On the shelf below are some books for guided reading groups. On the
other corner you can see an activity with an adult in the room where student
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learning new vocabulary for the new unit of work. Our artefact table, as Ken
mentioned, is also in the bilingual room. And you can see a display of some
objects from school, from home, has been displayed there. In the middle you
can see that I’m conducting an experiment with a student, making soft drink
in the classroom, and on the other corner is a picture of a teacher doing
running records in Vietnamese with a bilingual student.
Today to demonstrate how we conduct our learning in a bilingual setting I
would like to invite 2 of our 3/4 students to talk about what they have learned
and understood after an enquiry on a topic. The central idea of this unit is
“each individual is unique”. The lines of enquiry of this unit is a personal
belief, value, cultural and family make up who they are. The second lines of
enquiry is “nature and nurture impact on an individual’s development”.
Trans-disciplinary theme of this unit is who we are. The concepts we focus
on is “perspective and connection”, the learner profile we focus on are “open
minded” and “thinker” and the language focus is on exposition and
description, and you can see that this unit has been used before on that plan.
So without saying anything further, I would like to invite Tammas and Tia and
they will introduce themselves and talk about what they’ve learnt.
Student 1:
Student 2:
Student 1:
Student 2:
(Speaking in Vietnamese)
Hello, teachers; this is Tammas Bark, he is a year 3 student at Footscray
Primary School, and I’m Tia Fu and I am doing grade 4 this year.
(Speaking Vietnamese)
Recently we learned about our uniqueness in the unit of enquiry in English &
Vietnamese. Tammas just told us why he is unique. He is unique because
firstly he is a Footscray Primary School student. He wears everything blue
but his shoes. In Vietnamese we have different verbs that can all be
translated as “wear” in English. One verb for wearing a hat, another for
wearing a shirt or a pair of pants and a different one for wearing shoes. I am
also unique because today I am wearing earrings and in Vietnamese we use
another verb for that too.
Student 1:
(Speaking Vietnamese)
Student 2:
Tammas is also unique because of his family. There are 5 people in his family
- his dad, his mum, Tammas, his sister Lorraine and his brother Hamish. It
is special for Tammas today because his mum and his granddad are sitting in
the audience. I feel special too because my mum is also here.
Student 1:
(Speaking Vietnamese)
Student 2:
Student 1:
Student 2:
Monopoly
The most special thing about Tammas is that he can speak Vietnamese
although he is not Vietnamese like me. He said that maths and Vietnamese
are his 2 best subjects at school.
(Speaking Vietnamese)
Tammas just said that he likes playing on the computer and the game
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Student 1:
Thank you, Tia for telling everyone about me in English today. I am sure that
you are unique,, too.
Student 2:
unique?
(Speaking Vietnamese) Teachers did we persuade you that Tammas is
Student 1 & Student 2: Thank you for listening to us.
Speaker 4:
Because I was minding the microphone I didn’t have a chance to show you
Tammas and Tia’s project, through this unit of enquiry. You can see that
through very simple language activities we would be able to help a student
pick some of the aspect about them, so that they can present in a meaningful
work. This is Tammas project. He described what he wear, he talk about his
family, he can describe himself and what are his hobbies. This is Tia’s
project, and at the end of our unit of enquiry at our celebration of learning the
student would be able to present their project to the whole community.
So I hope that through our little snapshots we would be able to show you how
we embed language learning into the PYP concept and open up student to
become not only language learner but learning language in a meaningful
situation. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you to Ken and thank you to Chau and also a special thank you to
Tammas and Tia for presenting so well today. I thought that the last part
today would be to really have an opportunity for us to field some questions,
so that we can discuss and talk about our program. I wanted to just finish up
by finally just saying before we open up for questions, one thing that I’ve
noticed being at the school is that through having an international curriculum
but also through having a bilingual program in Vietnamese it really has
actually, provides really an authentic context for our students who do come
from a range of cultures. When you look out at the children playing at recess
and lunchtime they’re mixing with people from a range of different
backgrounds. And the classroom programs also support that building of
understanding. And I think one thing in terms of learning, in terms of - are we
preparing our children for the 1980’s or even further back, or are we
preparing them for 2020 when they’re entering the work force and their
working lives? And I think that’s something for us to really think about. And
what attitudes are they taking as they move into society? And I think one
really important thing that we’re wanting to focus on is this view of “us and
them”. And I think as global citizens we need to start to build understandings
of “us and us”. And not just thinking of the differences but actually really
thinking about what we all have in common. And I think the language
program with the school really supporting 7 hrs plus per week of intensive
Vietnamese learning, I think it really does actually deepen the children’s
understanding of a different culture, because they’re able to actually learn
about the culture through using the language. I’ll finish up there but I think it
might be an opportunity for people if they have any questions that they would
like to ask.
Question 1:
Is there any part of the curriculum that’s too hard to teach them in the
language, do you select to a certain extent?
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Speaker 4:
Can I answer?
Speaker 1:
Yes, you can
Speaker 4:
Well, yes, [inaudible – 27.05] social science unit are harder but if we just wind
it down and bringing the student in to the discussion we can find a way. Like
this unit, you can see that it’s not easy to show how a person can talk about
why they’re unique. But all language lesson would be involving talking about
what they wear, about their family and bring all that aspect into that unit and
making the student realise “Oh, I can pick this line to demonstrate a part of
me. So yeah, it just makes - the student make all the links together. Thank
you.
Speaker 2:
Any other questions?
Question 2:
I just wanted to say it’s great to hear about the stuff Footscray PS is doing.
Can you please talk a little bit about the role of community and parents in
your approach, please?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think one really important thing is being a small school we have a very
strong parent base within our community here who really want to be actively
involved with the children. I think a challenge that we still have is that there is
a hidden part of our community, which we’re really exploring ways of actually
trying to involved some parents from particular cultural groups. And we’re
sort of, at the moment, thinking of ways that we can actually achieve that,
and I think the bilingual network that were being involved in is being really
important because we are actually able to talk to other schools that have had
bilingual programs but that are also quite culturally diverse populations too,
where we can actually get some ideas from them. So we’re looking at things
like parent mornings. We have just introduced such things as parent clubs,
we’ve got parents actually who are running clubs over lunch time, to offer our
students a range of activities and that’s just beginning. And there has been
interest from the community to get involved and I’m really hoping that’s going
to continue to grow. We hold regular - like mornings at the start of the day,
coffee mornings for parents to sit around and chat. But I think there are
challenges in terms of that many of our parents, both parents are working, so
I’m actually trying to explore possibilities of greater involvement. Another
way is the sub committees of our school council, too. Where there are a lot
more parents this year who don’t have to be on the school council but can get
involved in other ways through supporting with those sub committees. I know
in the past there has been a lot of translation of newsletters for our
community. Especially when there was a greater portion of Vietnamese
families, I know that Chau and Han who is our other Vietnamese teacher,
very often would translate newsletters. But I think that’s a challenge that we
have got to continue to really look at and continue to find ways of reaching
out and involving. So we have also many Indian families at school now too,
but also some African families as well. So, to try and involve them within the
school community is really something that we are asking and seeking sort of
strategies to be able to do that. Any other questions?
Question 3:
I’m just interested in two elements of the program. Number one, whether it’s
an opt-in program or if it’s offered to all students at the school, and secondly
whether or not the linguistic elements of the bilingual program are reinforced
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in the regular classroom and whether or not any of your regular classroom
teachers have any language experience in Vietnamese and if that’s
something the school supports or…?
Speaker 2:
Ok, I’ll answer the first part, it is - actually the students make a choice. It is
offered to all of our students and at the moment 50% of our students are part
of the bilingual program and the other 50% are part of a LOTE program. So,
there is that choice with our children. And it has grown, I know - a few years
ago the bilingual program had far less participation from the students within
the community, so I’m hoping that’s something that will continue to grow and
in terms of more and more children wanting to see the value and learning a
second language. And I think that in Australia were actually different
because most of us, or a lot of us are not bilingual and languages aren’t…
you can go to European countries or Asian counties and people speak many
languages, so it’s really trying to promote the value of language learning and
the benefits it does have too. I suppose understanding two languages you
get to know the grammar and how it’s different in both languages it really
does give the children an insight into how language works and I think that’s
one of the major benefits for our students, that many of our students will
speak a second language at home, but I suppose were starting to learn that
were valuing our language learning through offering such an intensive
program. Did you want to add anything to that, Chau, in terms of the
teachers in the classroom, what’s your thoughts on that in terms of their
follow-up?
Speaker 4:
Thank you; the bilingual team has the chance to plan the lesson with the
classroom teachers or the teams, and we share plans and we share activities
and I will try to add up as much of those activities into bilingual lesson as I
can. So the link between the mainstream classroom and the bilingual
classroom will always be there. So they keep moving from one setting to
another setting, but the underlying concept will be carried over. So for
example we might do questioning in bilingual lesson, but when they go back
to their classroom, their question will be passed on back to the classroom
teacher and they will be included in the whole class list, so everyone will have
the chance to look at their questions and find out their enquiry along those
lines. Ken?
Speaker 3:
Yes, I was just going to say that a few years ago now, the teachers used to
have to go to the LOTE class as well in Vietnamese, and as well as that I
enrolled myself with another teacher at the school to learn Vietnamese over a
period of 6 months, so I was using it a lot in the classroom at that stage. And
I think Tammas can vouch for the fact that I used to give simple instructions
in Vietnamese in the classroom as well.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, I hope we answered your question; it was actually a good question.
Question 4:
My question would be around whether the school is tracking the students
when they go up to secondary school. Whether they continue with the
language or are they opting to do a different language and their proficiency
level if they continued with the language.
Speaker 2:
One thing that Chau’s been working on through the bilingual network, and
Chau, you can talk about this a little more, Chau is doing her Masters also at
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Melbourne University and one thing that they have looked at is that through
government, through looking at, there is really no progression points for
standards that really suit where we can measure our students in terms of
their progress available. So Chau and other teachers in different schools,
who are not necessarily teaching Vietnamese, have developed an
assessment tool, which will really track our students extremely well,
whichever language they are learning they have designed this tool, so it’s
quite a complex tool, but it’s very similar, I suppose, to - if you look at the
literacy or reading and writing continuance it’s very similar to that, where we
can track. Now, I think a challenge that we do have is, when our students
leave Footscray Primary School in terms of a PYP because none of our
feeder schools are IB or International Baccalaureate, so it’s a real challenge
in terms of them being able to continue to develop their skills or their attitudes
in the secondary school. But I’m hoping that the skills that they learn in their
Primary schooling really equip them well throughout their Secondary
schooling and they will continue to build those skills themselves. Chau, did
you want to talk about the assessment tool that you developed?
Speaker 4:
Yes, well - Monica is in the audience as well, so we have the challenge of
assessing students below year 5 because we don’t have progression points,
and our students move along the continuum way above a normal LOTE
program that other schools are offering, so we need tracking tools to track
those achievements. And the bilingual network - we are working on a tool to
allow you, just like we have quick fix for normal classrooms teachers - to
demonstrate the achievement of their student - we would like to have similar
tools to show our parents how their children are moving along the continuum.
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
Thanks. First of all I would like to thank the Footscray Primary School team
for coming along and sharing with us your program. There’s a few things
from it that I will take away from it myself, just the depth in which you
celebrate diversity and also for me it really came together when Tammas and
Tia got up and demonstrated and that’s when I began to develop the whole
picture and I’m sure many people in the room had that same sort of feeling.
So what I would like you to do is join me in thanking the people here for
sharing with us what they can do.
End of presentation.
For more information about the topics discussed in this podcast, please visit the Department
of Education and Early Childhood Development’s website: education.vic.gov.au
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