|
The opportunity for children to make links with children
and adults from other countries enables children to encounter
the living proof of a language or culture’s existence.
1. Overseas visitors to the school:
Within the urban context there are many opportunities to
make links with visitors from overseas. In University towns
there are students of education from many countries who
are desperate for the opportunity to visit a UK school.
The visitor can be deployed in the following ways:
· Present their language or culture as a mystery
that has to be solved. They might speak a little and write
a little on the board and children try to work it out using
their own language identification materials. They might
continue with a presentation of artefacts or food from their
countries. From here they could give the first letter of
the capital city or the country itself.
· Another mystery might involve the visitor in answering
only yes or no in their own language to questions in English
from the pupils or giving fuller answers which pupils have
to try to interpret using a range of strategies.
· The visitor could then continue by teaching the
class a simple nursery rhyme, a poem or how to count from
one to ten in their language.
· Alternatively the children might know in advance
of the nationality of the visitor and have prepared a few
phrases that they could try out. The visitor could then
help the children to develop their pronunciation.
2. Links with an overseas
school:
Many schools already have links through European funded
Comenius projects and other opportunities co-ordinated by
the British
Council
Schools from all over the world are keen to make links
with UK schools in order to practice their English. If a
class is receptive to all languages, they can take advantage
of such opportunities in the following ways:
· Give pupils an email partner where they can share
their languages.
· Work with a whole class on the language of a topic
such as food, weather or life at school.
· Exchange realia such as comics, magazines, digital
pictures of street signs, videos of favourite television
programmes.
· Investigate in tandem the mother tongues of classes.
The following two addresses are worth exploring:
Kidlink
Global
classroom
|
