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The Sentence Analyser was piloted by the children and staff in the EAL Hub at Lea Forest Academy in the autumn term of 2018. Over the following two terms, the children and staff used it in a variety of ways to support a widening of the children's vocabulary. The EAL Hub children's morphology skills were tracked, alongside a control group.
What did the data show? What did the staff think? Was the resource beneficial enough to become embedded? Let's find out!
The Sentence Analyser (a tool within the Learning Village) is a simple resource that allows learners to construct sentences to help them access their learning objectives. It helps them find alternative words and create sentences and phrases correctly. It is designed to generate a substitution table, which can be printed out and used as a writing or speaking frame. You can read more about it in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of articles.
Our aim was to find a resource that would help children learn the 75,000 words needed for their language comprehension skills to flourish and their morphology skills to deepen. Did we find the resource we were looking for?
After initial use of the Edtech Pilot Framework, a staff training session was held in the second half of the autumn term. The Sentence Analyser was introduced in this session and training was given on how to use it across the curriculum. During the second half of the spring term and the first half of the summer term, data was collected.
After analysing the data, what did it show?
Looking at the spring 2 data, it clearly shows that the Hub children continued to make progress in attainment at a good rate, while the control children also made progress, but at a less accelerated pace.
In the summer 1 term, the control children were introduced to the Sentence Analyser, which was used frequently in class. Their results for the summer 1 term show a significant increase in attainment, proving that the Sentence Analyser has a positive impact on children’s morphology skills.
Not only did the Hub children show accelerated progress in their morphology understanding, they also made good progress through the NASSEA continuum. They became more confident with their spoken English, holding more detailed conversations. In addition, their written work showed improvements: through the use of taught vocabulary and sentence structures, the children were better able to write meaningful sentences, paragraphs and short stories independently.
The summary of data was shared with the staff and a case study was completed. It was decided that the Sentence Analyser would be used wherever possible, as a tried and tested resource proven to be beneficial for boosting learners’ language comprehension and deepening their morphology skills.
Moving to and joining a new school is daunting for any child. It is essential that schools have procedures in place to support new arrivals with this transition (discussed in detail in our article here). However, it is important to consider that their parents may also be experiencing a similar transition, without necessarily having a network of support. If support is not provided, there is the potential for parents to struggle to access education, find employment and be part of the school or wider community.
Language learning strategies are tools to facilitate language learning that should be adapted to suit the needs of each individual.
There aren't a set of language learning strategies that makes you a perfect language learner, each student learns differently. However, there are some guidelines on the strategies others have found successful that can be provided to students to help them make more effective use of their time studying. It's important that students understand how they learn and what strategies are more effective than others.
Learners may have difficulties expressing their own ideas, thoughts and feelings.
Tip or Idea: Name the emotions. Use puppets, flashcards or simply hide and uncover your own face. Who can be first to name the emotion? Extend by giving a reason why e.g. He is happy because…
Learning Village resource: Feelings Snakes & Ladders game - land on a picture. Describe it and move forward 1 space! (I am happy when…/I am sad when…/I am shocked when…)