Blog Post 1.6
20 October 2021
On Friday the 22nd of October, Melbourne will emerge from 262 days of cumulative lockdown and re-engage with the community; and we will finally step back in the hallowed halls of our schools (unless you are a year 12 teacher and may have already been back in the classroom). Melbourne has experienced the world’s longest lockdown and don’t we know it. We are exhausted, fatigued and running on empty after more than a full teaching year of remote learning via Zoom, Teams and WebEx. On average, students in Australia attend school for 200 days per calendar year, therefore what we have collectively endured is no mean feat.
In light of this, and how exhausted we may be feeling as educators, it’s important to remember that our students, especially our EAL learners, will have much re-learning and re-adjusting to do. And of course, ameliorating these challenges in the final stages of the academic year is going to be a very trying task indeed. Our students have checked out, the majority of them haven’t been in a classroom for 77+ days and the impending doom of having to realign their sleep-wake cycles is most likely a nerve-wracking and anxiety fuelled prospect for many of them. Conversely, some students may be chomping at the bit to be back in the classroom, re-connect with friends and teachers and just feel a little bit more “normal” again. No doubt there will be a mixture of both mindsets in your classrooms.
Our EAL learners will need some extra TLC in re-navigating the classroom and school learning spaces and it’s our job to support them. Here are some suggestions on how you can assist EAL learners in their return to school over the coming weeks and, hopefully, reinvigorate their enthusiasm for learning:
1. Keep it simple: Don’t expect too much too soon, be realistic and allow students the time they need to re-adjust. Pair back your lessons and allow extra time for students to complete tasks; no doubt they will tire easier and may need more breaks.
2. Be open, honest and flexible: Our students need clarity, especially after being clouded by a haze of lockdown for so long, and an opportunity to talk about their experiences – perhaps a creative writing opportunity could evolve where students interview each other about their experiences and lessons learned in lockdown and then write a narrative about their classmate’s experiences from a 3rd person perspective – this also fosters empathy among the group and a shared experience.
3. Create opportunities for connection: Screens will no longer be the divider between us and them and students’ cameras will no longer be turned off. Students will become visible again, however, many students may likely feel more exposed and vulnerable without the ability to hide behind their screens. Create opportunities for connection and get to know each other again. Group work is going to be your best friend over the coming weeks; create and design opportunities for students to work collaboratively on small tasks and projects (whilst social distancing of course) and ensure success is measurable and achievable so that all students can gain a sense of success – this is paramount as many students may have felt invisible or undervalued during remote learning and their level of success may have diminished.
4. Review school routines and expectations: Keep abreast of school policies pertaining to distancing and other expectations and review these with your EAL leaners. Do they know which parts of the school they can access? Which days are they expected on site and which days are they to remain home during the hybrid easement back to school? Have their lockers been moved? Which materials are they missing? Do they need a stationery stock up?
5. Get students speaking: It is highly likely that many EAL students have had significantly less time to use their oral language skills via remote learning than at school– create meaningful opportunities for students to speak and monitor your own speaking in the classroom. Are you speaking more than your students in the lesson? How can you re-design your lesson so that students are at the centre and are able to express themselves through a variety of mediums and maximise their opportunities to speak?
6. Get students writing (with pen and paper!): Remote teaching has been somewhat heavy handed with typed work and I encourage you to provide opportunities for students to re-acquaint themselves with their pens/pencils and review their handwriting. How about a short writing task where they explain what idioms in their own language mean in English? This is also a fantastic plurilingual task. Journal writing is also another great way for students to reflect and reconnect with the writing process in a non-formal way. A prompt which encourages reflection such as “My greatest achievement in lockdown was…” should get the reflective juices flowing.
7. Pair back assessment: If you’re planning to run assessments when students return to face-to-face learning, try to take the pressure off and assess students in a less formal manner. For example, if you’re planning to assess students’ macro skills and are keen to assess their listening/speaking proficiency, perhaps design a conversation style assessment with their peers that is less intimidating than sitting down with the teacher 1-1 in a more formal manner. Take notes and observe their interactions on the periphery instead. Furthermore, space your assessments out across the remainder of the term, rather than hitting them in the jugular once they are back on campus. Alternatively, get students to design their own peer assessments and test each other.
8. Have fun: Be creative but try something new and spice it up; if you’ve exhausted Kahoot, NearPod, FlipGrid and other online gaming tools over the past weeks/months, how about trying some old fashioned EAL/language games to reinvigorate their competitiveness? Grab some 50 cent fly-swatters from the supermarket and play the memory game for sight words or Pictionary (which always gets a lot of laughs in my classrooms), Scattegories, Celebrity Head, the “letters” component of Letters and Numbers or you could simply cut out the "Target Words” game from the newspaper and bring it to class (see below) and see how many words they can make. Here are some more suggestions.
Finally, take care of yourself too. Don’t rush and create more fatigue for yourself; start slow and be kind to yourself. It’s going to be a big adjustment for everyone. I know I am going to miss having my bottomless cup of tea beside me on my desk whilst remote teaching, wearing Ugg boots and leggings on my lower half, being able to take a walk at lunchtime with my dog and even lunchtime conversations with my husband (although I think he’s secretly looking forward to less interruptions during his work day – us teachers, we are just too social for our own good!).
I wish all of you a safe return to school and I absolutely would love to hear about any other suggestions or resources you plan to implement over the coming weeks.
Stay safe, and happy teaching!
Julia
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