Community Village

 

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Academia Británica Cuscatleca (ABC) in El Salvador joined the Learning Village in April 2015.  However, they weren't fully active across Upper Primary until Communication Across Cultures came to their school in February this year to give an inset on EAL. 

Since then, they have used the Learning Village to support learners with accessing some of the basics of English as well as the curriculum content needed to help them to be successful in their lessons.

Although we can't put names to these results, you can see a snapshot of the top learner's progress over the last 30 days, here:

The Head of Village and EAL Coordinator at ABC, Jonathan Marquez, works in small groups with his learners to pre-teach and gap fill the necessary English language required for learners based on what is currently happening or about to happen in the curriculum and the weekly learner progress report he receives from the Learning village.

Jonathan says, "Students at the ABC are really enjoying Learning Village. They are benefiting so much from all the lessons available and the fact that they can do it at their own pace and leisure. They love the display of the map, making friends, receiving gifts and that they can challenge their mates to lessons. We see the knowledge they have gain have an affect in their learning. When I go in to classes, students call out to the teacher and ask if they can come with me to do Learning Village. It's a pleasing sight!"

ABC is fast approaching the top scores on the Learning Village leaderboard!

Thanks for sharing these photos ABC and keep up the good work!

With thanks to Academia Británica Cuscatleca the children and their parents for providing permission to publish these photos.

Further learning - Blog

Created: Wed 24th Dec 2014

The language show this year in Olympia made me even more aware of the gift of having more than one language. One of the stand's motto was 'monolingualism can be cured', another 'Speak to the Future' (www.speaktothefuture.org) campaigns to promote the teaching of languages in schools in the UK. Since this September all children in primary schools will be taught a language as the government finally realised that, in a mobile world, a second language is essential for a country's economic development.

Created: Mon 21st Apr 2014

In schools where English is the language of instruction we welcome new arrivals with limited English and, step by step, they become skilled in speaking English. These young learners have a gift, the gift of bilingualism. A skill that has a profound effect on their lives. This skills may affect their identity, the way they are educated, their employment, the friends they keep, marriage, where they choose to live, travel and how they think. The consequences are significant.

A sign with 'Phonics?' on it
Created: Tue 12th Apr 2016

As educational pedagogies continue to move cyclically, with new strategies moving in and out of favour, the battle of reading approaches continues to rage on between the 3 main approaches: Synthetic Phonics, Analytical Phonics and Whole Language methods. They are often viewed on a continuum, with the Whole Language approach (Top Down method) being the least skills based and the Synthetic Phonics approach (Bottom Up method) being the most (see figure 1).