Case Study
English at Barunga CEC
1993-1996
Initial Problem
Barunga Community Education Centre is a school in the NT 90 km souteast of Katherine. It has a daily attendance of 100 students ranging from pre-school to junior secondary. There are 10 teachers in the school and 5 Aboriginal assistant teachers.
In 1993 Neil Williams arrived at Barunga CEC as Principal. The school had been through a number of years of turmoil and the education program lacked direction. The school’s program was designated as a bilingual program in Kriol and English; however this was in name only, there was no consistent Kriol program operating in the school.
The following were also evident:
• Lack of appropriate resources
• No consistent programming throughout the school
• No records of achievement or tracking of children’s progress
• Low levels of literacy and numeracy
• Low levels of parental involvement
• Poor attendance patterns ( 67% of enrolment)
• High teacher and Assistant Teacher turnover(in the last three years 27 teachers, 8 of whome were neophyte; 7 assistant teacher, 2 of whom have resigned and returned)
Neil decided that these problems could be solved. He decided to address the underlying issue rather than each of these problems individually. The underlying issue was the lack of quality in the teaching/learning process. He acknowledged that there would be no quick fix, the problems were many and varied.
Neil set the public goal of achieving mainstream grade 5 literacy and numeracy standard by the end of year seven at school. Since the children enter school with little background in literacy or in English he felt this was a reasonable and achievable goal. He also stated that this would be achieved through a bilingual approach (in Kriol and English) and thus the methods used to achieve the goal and signposts along the way could not be drawn from English only programs.
Setting the
groundwork
The first stage was to talk to the senior staff. At Barunga there was immediate sympathy from the Teacher/Linguist, Jan Jardine, who believed that the school needed to work on the programming of the teachers and that the bilingual approach would work. Her common argument was that;
‘Education needs to work from where the children are and progress from there. At Barunga the children are Kriol speakers and we need to start from that point.’
It has been Jan who has provided much of the work and in particular much of the thinking through of what is needed, the ‘Big Picture’.
She believed (and still does) that what was needed was a consistent, coherent approach to teaching English which could be easily applied by the teachers (especially those new to Barunga) and which was built around an ESL approach to teaching. This would take into account the high level of teacher turnover which was the norm at Barunga. She also accepted the need for a consistent approach to tracking student’s development which was externally valid (i.e. it did not rely on whatever system of teaching was being used). This would enable the results of students at Barunga to be compared nationally.
Jan believed that the school needed an inservice package which could be used each year for new teachers. This package would explained Kriol and its relationship to English and also introduced teachers to the needs of the ESL learner.
Finally the bilingual approach meant that literacy would be established first in Kriol and literacy in English introduced once the students had enough oral competence in English. Thus what was needed was an English program which focused very clearly on oral English. In addition the school needed to develop a map of literacy skills so these could be tracked and the teachers would be able to know which skills should be developed in which language.
Thus the school had narrowed down its requirements to:
1. a programming model which was appropriate for ESL learner and which could be used by new teachers
2. a method of tracking learners progress through the school which had external validity
3. an inservice package which introduced teachers to the English/Kriol relationship and ESL learning strategies
4. a map of literacy skills acquisition in each language
At the time Neil and Jan still had no clear idea what this would look like, whether they were looking for one package which covered everything or a series of packages which would have to bundle together into a coherent whole. This obviously caused confusion in other people who were not clear on exactly what was wanted. The list of requirments above was never clearly stated at the time they were looking, it is only now in hindsight that this becomes clear.
The school now had to go out and find them.
The Search for the
“Answer”
In 1994 Neil and Jan started the search for the answer to the school’s requirements.
Their search involved a number of people and looking at a number of packages. Although they had a fairly good idea of what was wanted, they had no idea what the “answer” would look like. The following events occurred, in no particular order,:
• The SWELL program running at Macfarlane
primary in Katherine was examined. SWELL
is an early literacy program being developed by
• Jan attempted to rewrite the NT English Curriculum to provide a curriculum appropriate to bilingual teaching in Kriol and English. This was abandoned as being too big a task and not really necessary since the curriculum could be interpreted to suit the school’s purpose.
• Jan also attempted to develop a programming model.
• Neil and Jan examined the Scope and Sequence
documents of the NT English curriculum and the whole school was inserviced on
these by a Departmental adviser. Jan and
and the adviser spent many hours attempting to adapt these documents to suit
our needs. Jan and Neil also spent two
day in
• The First Steps documents produced through WA were examined. The Nt Department is supporting their implementation in a large number of schools.
• Jan examined the revised version of Walking Talking Texts. This is a rewrite of a programming model develop in the NT by Fran Murray. (the old version was called Walkin’ Talkin’ Stories). This model is based upon a language experience model but is very prescriptive and the activities are designed and sequenced specifically for ESL students. It comes in two forms, an oracy form for early childhood and a literacy form for primary. This particularly suits the bilingual model where the concerntration is on oracy in the early childhood classes and later on literacy in the primary classes.
• The school was involved in part of a DEET
book on Aboriginal English produced by David McRae. Drafts of this book were sent to the school
and in them it talked about ELA from
The FELIKS (Fostering English Languge In Kimberley Schools) is an inservice package which aims to develop teacher’s understanding of the language Kriol and the difficulties Kriol speakers have with literacy in English
• The National Statements were looked at and it was decided that the ESL Band Scales could be used to track students.
There are a number of other programs available that were also considered during this period. As each was examined the school’s requirements became clearer. Numerous discussions were held with various advisors. Each of these discussion further clarified the school’s requirements.
In the end the following decisions were made.
1. The school did not want to utilise a programming model that had been developed for mainstream classes. It was felt that there were too many differences between teaching English as a first language and English as a second language. In addition the school is working in a bilingual setting where literacy is taught in one language and introduced in the second languge another. The new program must allow for this.
Thus Walking Talking Texts was selected. It was decided that mainstream courses had much to offer and should be used to supplement our programming base. Thus First Steps and SWELL would be used by teachers as a resource.
2. It was decided to trial FELIKS in term 1 and evaluate its effectiveness. This was to overcome one of the impacts of teacher turnover in that new staff need to be quickly inserviced on Kriol language usage and be able to understand the impact this has on the teaching of English.
3. It was decided to use the national statements ESL Band Scales to track students through the school. This would provide the rigourous external validity needed to ensure that the progress made could be documented.
In addition Jan realised that there was not have enough hard data on the exact differences between Kriol and English and the areas where the children had difficulty. Thus the school applied for a grant to fund a linguist to study this.
This then satisfied the school’s first three requirements. The school have had still to work on the fourth.
How did it go
1995 was the year when all this started.
FELIKS and Walking Talking Texts were introduced over a two day inservice (Friday and Saturday) in week 2. FELIKS was continued throughout term 1. Walking Talking Texts was trialled, the trial to last for two units, about 10 weeks. The ESL Band Scales were also introduced and some children placed on the scales.
The submission for the consultancy was successful and a consultant started work in Week 2 of Term 1.
During the year the following have happened:
• The ESL Band Scales have been replaced by
Band Scales from NLLIA (National Languages and Literacy Institute of
• Walking Talking Texts has been very successful, especially in the early childhood classes. It provides a very good base model programming in an ESL environment.Although some teachers have found it difficult to learn how to use initially, teachers now who have been using it all year feel very comfortable with the model. The early childhood teachers have found that some students have made the transfer of literacy skills from Kriol to English naturally.
• Other mainstream resources, particularly SWELL, are starting to find their place as teachers become very familiar with Walking Talking Texts. In addition the school started to put together a series of “Situation Boxes”. These are collection of materials which are used by the students to develop the oral skill needed for the students to operate in specific situations (e.g. Clinic, shop, cafe, airport, police station). The “box” contains all the materials (dress up clothes, physical equipment {telephones, plates,...} and teaching notes) which the teacher needs to work with. The basic sequence of the teaching is to set up the situation in a corner of the room, allow the students to free play in the area observing the language, introduce through modelling the apopropriate language patterns (in both languages), drill the students in these patterns and finally allow free play in the situate monitoring the students oral language.
• The consultancy was completed. There will be some 70 conversation videoed, transcribed and analysed. A report has been written and this is a wealth of data on the Kriol spoken by children at Barunga in 1995. This report is now being examined and from this will come:
- a revamped version of the inservice package FELIKS specifically adapted for the Barunga situation using examples recorded here.
- information for teachers on who to overcome specific linguistic difficulties which Kriol speakers face in their learning of English oracy and literacy.
The school is still no closer to a cohesive map of literacy acquisition. This is the next big task.
Conclusion
This process does not end like a fairy tale, the quest is not over and the school’s problems are not solved.
Neil has seen the following improvements:
- an improvement in the children’s literacy and numeracy skills (though this has yet to be verified by hard data)
- resources are much better
- there is now starting to be consistent programming and records are being kept.
The school has plans for tracking student’s progress. This will involve a computerised system, however what form this takes and which program is used is yet to be decided
However the map of literacy acquisition is still as far away as ever.
Parental interest, attendance patterns and teacher turnover are unchanged.
The school’s major emphasis over the next two years will be to develop stategies to allow greater parental involvement particluarly with homework. The other major emphasis is to consolidate the current program with support materials and exemplars of work.
The staff are optimistic about the future. The problems are there and the school is tackling them head on in the only way it can, by improving the quality of its work.