Phase 1 teacher participant example
Japanese year 8
Cynthia Dodd
Queensland
© Commonwealth of Australia 2007
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The views expressed in the publication do not necessarily represent the views of the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training.
Acknowledgment
This work was funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training under the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP).
Attention! TEACHERS AT WORK!
Welcome to an example of teachers’ programmes drawn from their work during Phase 1 of the ILTLP. Teachers were asked to plan, document, teach (at least in part) and share, either a long term teaching programme (e.g. a semester long programme or longer) or a short term teaching programme (e.g. a unit or term long programme).
Their work is provided for you to examine, consider and make use of, in expanding your own understanding of intercultural language learning in practice. Not all programmes provided by Phase 1 teachers have been posted on this website. Some teachers did not feel comfortable with sharing their and their students work at this time, others did not manage to obtain the various permissions to include student work and photographs and others did not create programmes that fulfilled the ILTLP requirements.
What kinds of materials can you expect?
- You will not find models of programming that you can instantly adopt and teach among the work posted here. That was never the intention. You will find ideas about programming that you can use, however, working in your own context.
- You will not find ‘best practice’ or exemplars of definitive programmes for intercultural languages teaching and learning. You will find some outstanding approaches to programming that advance our understanding of how to make intercultural languages teaching and learning a rich and effective learning experience for students.
- You may find what you regard as some errors of language use or some hints of pedagogies of which you may be critical. However, you will also find professional educators striving to make sense of their work with students, interculturality and language learning. You will find a great deal to learn from.
What this and other teachers’ programmes show are ‘teachers at work’. The Phase 1 teachers responded to their particular contexts, the curriculum and assessment frameworks they must work within, the particular demands they and their students face in languages education and their own ‘learning-by-doing’ in relation to intercultural language teaching and learning. You will see how a teacher and a group of students working together, taking account of their own identities and cultural understandings, make learning happen. The teacher profiles and reflections generously provided by these teachers provide professional insights into the interaction of programming and ‘what happened’. One teacher asks at one stage during her teaching ‘Do I know what I am looking for here?’ It’s a highly professional question about what learning looks like. It’s a question for all of us.
You will also get glimpses of pedagogies at work to bring the structure, sequence and assessment aspects of teaching into life. One teacher scratches her head and asks her children how we might categorise the groups they belong to, here in Australia and if they lived in Japan, and the words they would use. Others introduce ICT at crucial moments or involve parents and other teachers. Reading across these programmes, you will get a sense of the dynamic that teaching from an intercultural language teaching and learning stance creates, for teachers, for students, for whole schools in some cases, and for communities in others.
You will learn a great deal!
UNDERSTANDING THELAYOUT
Teacher participants in Phase 1 of the Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice project were asked to develop a number of sections in their programmes or units of work. These sections are explained below. Teachers prepared their programmes on an individual basis, and may not have followed these sections in the same sequence.
Teacher profile
In this section teacher participants profile their socio-cultural and linguistic enculturation, consider how this shapes teaching and learning in their programmes and how they apply this in their interactions with students.
School context
In this section teacher participants describe the context of the school and its language programmes. They may describe the demographics of the school, the languages offered, the levels at which it is taught, the number of students taking a language, the number of teachers, resources and facilities, the assessment requirements and the place of languages in the curriculum.
Programme
The programmes provided by the teacher participants in this section may be a unit of work all of which was taught in the classroom or a long term programme of which a part was taught. The module content and assessment procedures follow the teaching policies and instruments and assessment requirements of the state and territory education system.
Reflection
Here teacher participants reflect on what they learned through their programme preparation, identifying the changes that the intercultural focus necessitated in their programme planning, teaching and assessment and the impact this had on their students’ learning.
Programme
The Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice Project (ILTLP)
Option 2: Year-long Japanese programme
Context
One Year 8 class of 22 boys.
Japanese learning experience:
12 started in Year 4;
2 started in Year 6;
8 started in Year 8
Time on task: 3 x 50 minute lessons per week, usually in their own classroom, as necessary in computer lab
Whole School Languages Profile attached. (Appendix 1)
Purpose and aims of the programme
The ILT related aims of the Japanese language program are that the students go beyond “tolerance” and notions of socio-cultural facts, beyond collecting information ‘about’ the target culture and language, to become linguistically and interculturally proficient. This will involve experience and exploration of the nature of language, culture and inter- and intra-cultural experience, as well as the development of Japanese language proficiency. The focus is on making cultural, intercultural and intracultural meaning as well as mastering linguistic forms. The principles which frame the program combine the ILTLP principles – active construction, making connections, social interactions, reflection, responsibility – with the principles which underpin effective L2 learning.
Targeted learning outcomes
- Evidence of developing proficiency in the target language
- Evidence of developing intercultural proficiency: understanding of the nature of culture and of themselves as cultural actors in both intra- and inter-cultural terms
- Understanding of the concepts of identity, culture and survival
- Evidence of knowledge of the target language, in terms of grammar, form and functions, and also as cultural and social practice
- Knowledge of Japanese communicative patterns and how these identify and contribute to cultural processes and the ability to compare with L1 cultural processes and communicative patterns
- Development of a metalanguage for talking about these things
- Evidence of the ability to develop cultural literacy: to experience, notice and reflect on the target language’s values, ways of expressing meaning.
Content – interactions – tasks
The linking device through the year is the interconnected themes of language, cultural identity and survival.
L2 is used unless otherwise stated.
The first two units of this programme are Term units, the last is a Semester unit.
- Unit 1: Students will focus first on general notions of identity, beginning with their individual identity and their own “tribe”, moving out to other groups to which they belong. This will then scaffold their exploration of Japanese constructions of identity and of the ways in which these are contained and constructed in language.
- Unit 2: The second component focuses on sport, which is explored via a cultural comparative analysis frame, comparisons explored with a Japanese keypal’s or DEAI character’s sporting choices. Sporting involvement is a significant component/natural extension of national history/personal identity in the context of this student group in this school (e.g. the popularity of Rugby Union in this boys’ school).
- Unit 3: The final component explores traditional Japanese and Australian stories as cultural texts, on issues relating to species endangerment/cultural identity, focussing on the theme of survival in times of change and upheaval. This unit builds on the personal/group identity theme of the previous units and, through stories, traces links between Aboriginal culture and the animal world, Japanese traditional culture and nature. The following questions are offered: How do stories reflect changed cultural constructions in new contexts and under changed circumstances? How does identity survive and/or change? Can one build a new “uchi” (Japanese “inner circle”) in a foreign setting? This focus links to the QSA Years 1 to 10 Syllabuses: SOSE strands of Time, Continuity and Change/ Culture and Identity and the English Cultural strand. Because of synergies with current focuses in the Arts programme, this is an integrated Japanese/ Arts unit and will culminate in a public puppet performance entitled “Dreaming Bunraku”, narrated in Japanese and enacted with puppets and backdrops made by the boys and dramatised in Drama classes. This performance integrates the dual focuses of identity and survival.
Queensland context
TheQSA Year 4-10 LOTE Syllabus requires coverage of six fields of knowledge twice in a three year course.
These are: Personal and Community Life, Leisure and Recreation, Natural World, Built World, International World, Imaginative World.
Specific language functions, grammar, process skills and strategies need to be taught in a spiralling up process embracing increasing complexity as students move along a communicative continuum. Hence, these three units cover the four highlighted fields (above) and explicitly teach selected language functions and literacy skills. Each unit is organised around a logical sequence of meaningful, purposeful tasks and interactions, moving through Orientating, Enhancing and Synthesising phases.
Units
Term /Tasks/Interactions
/ILT Frame
/Language functions
/Grammar
/Script
/Resources
1Belong
ing to groups / Orientating phase:
- Identify groups to which class members belong. Teacher models own identity profile, shows visuals representing family, school, year level, activity etc. Teacher questions class, then individuals mind map in notebooks and feed back to small groups.
Noticing:
What is your “tribe” (nationality/race/religion/family/ customs/school culture)? Where were your parents born? / Identifying and asking about people, places and things
Identifying and asking about situations and activities / これ、（それ、あれ）は 私のかぞくです 五人かぞくですね。
目があおいです
どんなグループに ぞくしていますか
何年生ですか
私は （かぞく) のグループ にぞくしています.
なに人ですか.
お父さんはどこで生まれましたか
Names and members of groups, group ID / All hiragana
All katakana
(sports, countries)
目
何年生
一。。。二十
人
中国、、日本
ごう州
か族、みん族recognize / QSA Year 4-10 LOTE Syllabus CD Rom – “Belonging to groups” module -
The Japan Forum
DEAI Kit
- Give reasons for belonging to these groups.
Students individually read and complete “Why I belong to a group” (QSA Res 2) and share findings with a partner.
L/S/R assessment opportunity / Why do you belong to … group?
Interrogating culture-in- language -Noticing/comparing/reflecting:
(Why) do Japanese students tend more to group activities? / どうして。。。にぞくしていますか。
そのグループにうまれました(か）
自分でえらいました
そのほかのりゅう / QSA module -Resource 2
Enhancing phase:
- Teacher models her weekly leisure activities and outlines whether they are solitary or group activities. Students complete a survey for themselves then group into 4s and interview the other group members about activity preferences, recording findings on Res. 3.
whether solitary or group.
- Students view web pages about two Japanese students and analyse texts to find the details of Yamamoto Takayuki and Tamaki Shun’ichi and what activities the two students do and whether they are group activities. Students add their details to the surveys.
- Based on this and their previous worksheets, students draw a Venn diagram and track similarities and differences between their own personal profile and that of one of the Japanese boys.
Noticing/compar-ing:
What is Japanese student’s “tribe” (nationality/race/
religion/family/ customs/school culture)? Where were their parents born?
Group versus individual orientation – history,
Amaterasu, warewareno Nihonjin, banzai
Notion of “zoku” --in sport / modern day yakuza / youth groups/fads.
Reflecting:
Pressure to conform/succeed – group suicide phenomenon / Describing situations, activities and events / ひまな時に何をしますか
［クラブ］かつどう
一人で それとも グループで 。。。を
しますか
トムくんは （一人で、 グループで）。。を しました・ませんでした
私は 。。。とくらべて、（かぞく、かつどう）が おなじ です
・ちがいます。 / 時、時間
月，火、水 、木、金、土
よう日
同じ / QSA CD
Res 3
- Students view video segment and complete worksheets focussed on time and activities.
- Teacher tells of activities she did in the past week – Friday night, to the movies with friends, finished at 11pm, Sunday lunch with family etc. and writes a weekly timetable on a blank OHT timetable
- Students draw up their own weekly schedule and calculate how much time spent in group activities.
- Teacher partially deletes QSA CD Res.5.
# This resource is intended to apply the skill of listening for key recently modelled linguistic elements. / Noticing:
Linguistic elements
Comparing:
Own timetable with other students’
Reflecting:
What nationality is the speaker?
Individual differences about being in groups / Describing situations, activities and events
Identifying when / Time (に）/
からTimeまで ［かつどう］を します・しました
（月よう日）の 三時から五時まで、ときどき、いつも、 ぜんぜん
日本のみんな / 時間
よう日
時々 / Video - NSW
”Japanese for Junior Secondary Students”
Vol 1.1
Worksheets 1.2,1.3,1.4
QSA CD Rom
# Res 4, 5
- Students forms pairs and, using a dictionary, read group rules (Res. 6) -teacher can edit out as desired - to each other in turn and indicate whether they agree/disagree.
- Students then form groups of 5 and collate their decisions. The group leader reports to the teacher, teacher summarises on board/poster. This becomes set of class rules.
- Students choose groups of up to 3, read Res.7 and decide on their own rules for a group of their own design.
Situated perspectives – differences in priorities and values
Comparing:
Ways of disagreeing – Aust/Japan
Reflecting:
Why is language/tone different? Is this changing?
Who might group suit? Why?
Group norms – how much freedom in Japan? / Agreeing and disagreeing / 私は/三人の メンバーは さねせいです、はんたいです / QSA CD
Res. 6
Res.7
- Groups read a table of human needs/wants and prioritise them in a ladder. Teacher models needs vs wants, using pictures and a large Venn diagram and students suggest items for each category.
- Groups decide on an age group they are familiar with and suggest needs/wants for that age then share this orally with whole class.
- Teacher asks what students do/could do for the chosen age group, then each group develops a poster of things they can do.
Is this hierarchy the same for all Australians, in Aust/Japan? Why?
ILT task: Discuss the nature and function of groups:
Why do we group? Intracultural awareness: the self and different groupings. / Comparing
Stating abilities / Person にはThing が 大切ですか
ほしいですか
もとっ大切、、一番大切
これよりadjです
Person/groupには
AはBよりadjです
Group に私は
…が できます / 赤ちゃん
子ども
年をとった人
．。才からのグループ / QSA CD
Res 8
- Teacher uses pictures (can be Res 9 upscaled to a poster) to introduce the school environment group and member activities.
- Students listen to two members of the group discussing belonging to the group and identify/write down the benefits.
- Students in their groups research a Japanese school group (kurabu katsudou) and identify/note the benefits of belonging/expectations to belong. They report back to the class through a Japanese poster they design telling the benefits of that group
Reflecting:
ILT task: discuss the nature and function of groups: why do we ‘group’?
Intracultural awareness: the self and different groupings – role of language in this
われわれの日本人内、外 / Identifying people, places and things.
Identifying and describing situations and activities. / こちらで 。。をします
…することがadjです
いいてん、
いいこと、
好きなことは何ですか
一番adj
だれでもいいです / 内、外 / QSA CD
Res 9
Res 10
and
student research
- Teacher uses realia/authentic materials to show identification features used by groups.
- Students work in groups to match group identifiers (badges/colours etc) to the groups and add others they know to complete the worksheet (Res.11)
- Class brainstorms ideas for identification features for a new group.
- Teacher suggests other ways of identifying groups – e.g. a song.
- Students work in groups to choose/write a song for their group
reflect: