Investigation A

1. Read one or more of the passages listed below under “Further reading” and, if possible, discuss them with colleagues who have also read them.
2. Note down three ideas in the passage that could be used to scaffold bilingual Pasifika students’ English-language learning or other ideas that could enhance teaching of these students.
3. Comment on what these ideas may imply for your teaching and discuss how they might be used with your bilingual Pasifika students.
4. List up to three ways of scaffolding your bilingual Pasifika students’ development in English and any ideas for encouraging them to use their Pasifika languages in their learning.

Further reading

• Chapter 4 of both Effective Literacy Practice books (Ministry of Education, 2003b and 2006) discuss a number of instructional strategies (such as modelling, prompting, and giving feedback) that teachers can use to scaffold learning. These are not restricted to Years 1–8, but are important strategies for teaching learners from early childhood to adulthood. (Reference copies of these books are available to secondary schools.)
• Ministry of Education (2003a, pages 73–78) discusses the research evidence on scaffolding learning for diverse students.
• Franken, May, and McComish (2005, Section 5.3.4, pages 65–66) discuss language scaffolding for Pasifika students.
• Gibbons (2002) looks at how mainstream teachers with little or no specialised ESL training can meet the challenge of teaching linguistically diverse students.

A framework for scaffolding language

Scaffolding in language learning has specific focuses. The table below provides a framework to help you decide what aspect of language learning you want to focus on during a particular learning activity. To move from defining the focus to scaffolding language development, you also have to think about the purpose of your focus (for example, do your students need to develop more complex language for a real communicative purpose?), the methods that can be used to support and scaffold the students’ learning, and the students’ goals and associated success criteria.

Language focus	Components of language
Students need to learn to use:	Sounds	Words	Sentences	Texts
More complex language
More fluent language		X
More accurate or correct language		X
	How language is used
Focus	Speaking	Listening	Reading	Writing
More complex language
More fluent language	X
More accurate or correct language	X

Using the table

Focus: The four marks (X) in the table show that at a particular time, you have decided to focus on developing students’ skills in speaking sentences more accurately and fluently.

Purpose: The purpose could be for students to learn to produce fluent spoken sentences in accurate English when contributing to class discussions.

Method: You might scaffold this learning by modelling two or more sentences that comment on a specific subject, drawing students’ attention to their features. Then have students work in pairs to construct a similar sentence using their own comment, check the accuracy of the English they have used, and practise saying their sentences fluently to their partner before contributing them to a whole-class discussion.

Criteria for success: The content criteria could be that the students produce a relevant, meaningful sentence. The criteria for fluency could be appropriate phrasing with no hesitation or unplanned repetition. The criteria for accuracy could be that the students produce a sentence with correct and clearly spoken words in an English sentence structure that is appropriate for the informal discussion context.

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