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Session 1. Know Your Learners and Their Languages
Objective. Build a language profile of your class and of three pupils from simple evidence, and choose a first support for each.
A pupil who is quiet, slow or often wrong is not always a pupil who cannot learn. In a multilingual class the same behaviour can mean a newcomer to the language, a pupil who talks fluently but cannot yet follow a textbook, or a pupil who needs help with reading in any language. If you guess, you will often guess wrong. This lesson gives you a way to look before you decide: a short language profile built from what you see, with four stages for four skills.
Key ideas
A profile has more than one line
- Ask five things: the home language(s), the language of earlier schooling, how long in this school's language, whether the pupil reads in the home language, and what the pupil can do in each skill.
- 'Weak in Uzbek' or 'weak in Russian' is a label. It hides whether the pupil is a newcomer, a fluent talker who cannot yet write, or a pupil whose difficulty is not language at all.
- Keep the profile short: a few lines per pupil, updated each term. It is a teaching tool, not a file for the office.
Skills grow at different speeds
- Understanding usually grows before speaking, and speaking before writing. A pupil can be 'Growing' in listening and 'Starting' in writing in the same week.
- Use four stages for each of the four skills: Starting, Building, Growing, Secure. They are rough guides for teaching decisions, not marks.
- Many pupils go through a quiet period of listening before they speak. Do not push; give ways to take part that need little speech, such as pointing, sorting and drawing.
Everyday talk is not school language
- A pupil can chat freely in the yard and still struggle with 'therefore', 'in contrast' or the structure of a science text. Academic language takes longer to build, often several years.
- So a pupil who 'sounds fluent' may still need scaffolds in reading and writing. Check the school tasks, not only the talk.
- The opposite also happens: a pupil with weak speech may be strong in reading the home language and in mathematics.
Different pupils, different first moves
- A newcomer needs understanding first: pictures, gestures, a partner, key words. A fluent talker who cannot write needs models and frames for texts.
- A pupil with a reading difficulty needs literacy support in any language; do not confuse it with learning a second language.
- Never set a pupil's home language against the school language. Both are assets; the profile shows how to use one to build the other.
Four stages for each skill
What goes into a profile
A useful profile answers five questions. Which languages does the pupil use at home? In which language was the pupil taught before? How long has the pupil learned in this school's language? Does the pupil read in the home language? What can the pupil do now in understanding, speaking, reading and writing? The first four are background; the fifth is what you observe in lessons.
Get the facts in friendly ways: a short chat with the pupil, a word with the family at the school gate or on the phone, and a look at earlier work. Write what you saw, not a verdict: 'follows three-step instructions with gestures' is useful, 'weak pupil' is not.
Reading stages across skills
Place the pupil at Starting, Building, Growing or Secure for each of the four skills separately. Many pupils have a 'spiky' profile: Building in understanding, Starting in writing, Secure in the home language. The pattern, not an average, tells you what to do first. A famous example of stages is the Bell Foundation's five-level description of learners of English; ours is simpler so that you can use it in a busy week.
Stages describe language, not ability. A pupil at Starting in writing may be the best mathematician in the class. Check the profile every term, because understanding can move quickly while writing moves slowly, and your supports should move with it.
Examples from the classroom
Five minutes with Rustam
Scene. Aziz teaches Grade 5 in Samarkand. A colleague calls the new boy Rustam 'weak'. Aziz watches him for five minutes during pair work. Rustam follows two instructions when Aziz points, copies the board correctly, helps his partner draw the water cycle and says only the word 'bug' (steam). Aziz writes: understanding Building, speaking Starting, drawing strong. He decides to give picture cards and a Tajik-speaking partner.
Insight. A few minutes of observation replace a label with facts you can teach from.
Fluent in the yard, lost in the text
Scene. Malika teaches Grade 6 science in Tashkent. Aysulu, who speaks Kazakh at home, chats easily with everyone. But in the text on evaporation she stops at 'therefore' and writes a list of facts. Malika puts a small bank on the wall: because, so, therefore, as a result. Next week Aysulu's answers have two linked sentences.
Insight. Everyday fluency does not guarantee academic language; the support must match the school task.
Not a language case after all
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 4 in Fergana. Timur, whose family speaks Tajik, speaks Uzbek fluently but reads slowly. She asks him to read two short lines in Tajik and finds the same slow, uncertain reading. She does not give him a second-language programme. She asks the school for reading support and gives him short books to read aloud in a quiet corner.
Insight. Checking the home language shows whether the need is language learning or reading itself.
Common pitfalls
- Calling a quiet pupil 'weak' before you have seen what the pupil understands.
- Using one overall level instead of four separate skills.
- Assuming that a pupil who speaks fluently needs no help with reading and writing school texts.
- Collecting information about languages and never using it to change a lesson.
Profile Three Pupils
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE Grade 5 class (30 pupils, Samarkand, Uzbek-medium) and six short pupil notes. Read the stage table.
- Pairs (12 min): choose Rustam, Dilnoza and Aysulu. For each, give a stage (Starting, Building, Growing, Secure) for understanding, speaking, reading and writing, and name one strength.
- Pairs (8 min): for each of the three, write one first support that matches the profile. Then say which of the other three pupils (Jasur, Gulnara, Timur) may need something other than language support, and why.
- Groups (10 min): compare with another pair. List three more facts you would ask the family or the pupil, and agree how to keep the profile short and respectful.
- Alone (5 min): write your classroom action task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which fact in the notes changed your first idea of a pupil?
- For which pupil was the stage different from skill to skill, and what does that mean for teaching?
- Which pupils in your own class have you only known by a label so far?
Reflect
- Which languages are in your class that you have never asked about?
- Which pupil sounds fluent but struggles with school texts?
- What would you want a new teacher to know about your pupils' languages?
Try it tomorrow
- Watch one quiet pupil for five minutes during pair work and write only what you see and hear.
- Ask three pupils or their families which language they use at home and whether they read in it.
- Draw the four-stage table for one pupil and choose one first support.
Further reading and links
Describe each pupil by what they can do in each skill and language, then pick the first support from that description.