The school is a government school for teaching newly arrived primary and secondary aged students that are permanent residence and have been staying in Australia for less than 6 months. Most students who stay in the language school are eligible for a 20 week full time program. The main aims of the school is to help students develop language and learning skills that meets the educational demands of the mainstream schooling system, and to prepare students into the Australian society.
There are around 180 secondary students and 160 primary students across 2 campuses. The children come a variety of different countries including China, Burma, Korea, and are grouped into classes according to their English language level and age. Preparing students for mainstream schools, students have timetables with English language taught across school subject areas.
The first class i wa
s able to visit was a primary 5 class with 10 students from different backgrounds and nationalities. Despite the different academic backgrounds of students, the teacher was still able to conduct a successful lesson through catering towards their individual needs. The teacher would ask easier questions for students who are not confident with the language, whilst look for harder and more detailed answers for stronger students. As well as this, the teacher wouldn't correct students if answers were not perfect, but would encourage the students by giving the correct grammatical form by slowly repeating the answer along with the student, but reshaping it to the correct grammatical form.
Cooperative approaches were used within the classroom, where students formed into groups to create their own sentences. Information gap was also formed within this process, where students would help each other and teach each other the correct grammatical form of a sentence. This enabled a very friendly and motivational environment as students not only care about themselves but the success of others as well.
Another class i observed was 2B which was a class made up of 15 - 17 year olds with a higher English ability for thei
r age. In this class, students were to continue working on their presentations of Melbourne city in the computer room. I noticed that the teacher was consistently walking around the classroom, checking the progress of her students and making herself available for students if they needed help. Catering for individual needs was evident as the teacher made sure that every student had a task, students whom have finished their presentations would play games or word-search that is related to their topic. These games helped students with both reading and speaking skills.
Overall, i think that Blackburn English Language School has done a successful job in catering individual differences, and has helped prepare students towards the mainstream educational system by consistently taking advantage of opportunities for English learning.
There are around 180 secondary students and 160 primary students across 2 campuses. The children come a variety of different countries including China, Burma, Korea, and are grouped into classes according to their English language level and age. Preparing students for mainstream schools, students have timetables with English language taught across school subject areas.
The first class i wa
s able to visit was a primary 5 class with 10 students from different backgrounds and nationalities. Despite the different academic backgrounds of students, the teacher was still able to conduct a successful lesson through catering towards their individual needs. The teacher would ask easier questions for students who are not confident with the language, whilst look for harder and more detailed answers for stronger students. As well as this, the teacher wouldn't correct students if answers were not perfect, but would encourage the students by giving the correct grammatical form by slowly repeating the answer along with the student, but reshaping it to the correct grammatical form.
Cooperative approaches were used within the classroom, where students formed into groups to create their own sentences. Information gap was also formed within this process, where students would help each other and teach each other the correct grammatical form of a sentence. This enabled a very friendly and motivational environment as students not only care about themselves but the success of others as well.
Another class i observed was 2B which was a class made up of 15 - 17 year olds with a higher English ability for thei
r age. In this class, students were to continue working on their presentations of Melbourne city in the computer room. I noticed that the teacher was consistently walking around the classroom, checking the progress of her students and making herself available for students if they needed help. Catering for individual needs was evident as the teacher made sure that every student had a task, students whom have finished their presentations would play games or word-search that is related to their topic. These games helped students with both reading and speaking skills.Overall, i think that Blackburn English Language School has done a successful job in catering individual differences, and has helped prepare students towards the mainstream educational system by consistently taking advantage of opportunities for English learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment