A step towards language aware education

2024-06-12T08:40:33+03:00

On this first step you will explore how to approach language aware education as part of everyday educational practices. This step involves three parts:

1. a lecture on the Multilingual School and Language Aware Education
2. guidelines from EDUFI on language aware approaches
3. carefully thinking about the language demands of a standard textbook text

Suggestions for the demo:

1. Compare your notes from the lecture on the role of language in education - feel free to add to your notes, add insights, questions, associations, examples
2. Then take a moment to reflect as an individual - when and how have speaking, listening, reading and writing been easy and/or difficult for you in school? Discuss in pairs: how similar and/or different have your experiences been? What has helped and/or hindered you? What about when thinking about another language you know? TIP: the JYU student study map might help you be more aware of how you use language in your university studies - complete it after the demo if you haven't done so already.
3. In small groups, divide the reading of the short EDUFI guide for Language Aware Education in Finnish schools (approx. 8 pages). Using the contents list and information in the guide produce a concept map to start building the bigger picture of language awareness. Compare the different maps - is there something more to be added to your map? Save your map to further develop as you move along the pathway!
4. Finally, using the resource site On a journey with a multilingual student! use the sample pages from an environmental science textbook to work through the questions on the use of language in the text and what this might mean for teachers. When you have worked through the questions, reflect together - how did this task connect with the bigger picture of language awareness that you have started to build in this first step of the pathway?

Remember this is only the beginning of the language aware pathway, there are more steps and different perspectives to come, but hopefully this has been a useful start.

Background materials:

https://monikielisenoppijanmatkassa.fi/materials-in-english/ (especially Alakoulun ylli) (material in Finnish)

Language Aware Education – Language Aware School (EDUFI) (material in Finnish)

Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014, esp. Section 4.2

Moate, J. (2017). Language considerations for every teacher. Kieli, koulutus ja yhteiskunta 8(2)

NOTE TO SUPERVISOR:

2024-08-14T09:53:53+03:00

Hopefully this step will help student teachers to recognise how language is an inherent feature of many everyday activities and relationships in school. While it can be somewhat overwhelming to suddenly realise children can have very different language backgrounds and different languages, it is good to know that language aware approaches are good for all students. Being aware of language is also good for students with language-related learning difficulties, students who are just beginning to develop their own study skills and students with diverse sociocultural backgrounds - as well as multilingual students. The first step is to open the way for the Language Aware Pathway and encourage students to ask questions, reflect and read further.

STEP 1: The linguistic landscape of school - who & where are we?

A step towards language aware education

NOTE TO SUPERVISOR: