I would like you to put your fruit in the bin or in your bag
and I would like you to put your drink bottle under your table
and come sit beautifully on the floor like a good listener.
Can you do that straightaway, please?
My name's Nicole Rodda.
I am a grade one teacher at St Anthony's Primary School
which is situated in Melton South,
which is a low socioeconomic area.
The school has around about 300 students
and a lot of those students represented at the school
come from different cultural backgrounds.
I'm seeing lots of good listeners on the floor ready to start.
NICOLE: Jen is the other grade one teacher at the school.
She has come to watch me model teacher talk in the classroom,
giving instructions, modelling language
and talking really clearly to the children
about what they need to be doing.
So she was in there really to have a look
at how I set a focus on oral language,
which was creating sentences
and how everything was linked to that focus.
We are going to work together
and you are going to work on your own as well
to create sentences that make sense.
Can you tell me why you think it's important
to make sentences that make sense?
Why can't we just say them any way we like?
Jai.
So people know...
..what you're talking about.
So people know what you're talking about.
People might not understand you
if you're not using your sentence structure properly.
That's really important.
"I jumped into the ocean and I saw..."
Then the place that I jumped into, what was that?
-Isaac? -Into the ocean.
Into the ocean. That is the place.
Would you turn to the person next to you
and could you share what you might see if you jumped into the ocean?
NICOLE: I've identified that in my class
there is a real need to improve the oral language -
in the whole class,
but in particular there is a group of students that need assistance.
Can I get you to turn around?
Could you put your hand up and tell me something you might see
when you jump into the ocean?
-Amy. -Starfish.
-Louder. -Starfishes.
'Starfish', we say. Genevieve.
Dolphins.
-David. -A killer whale.
A killer whale.
I like how you put the word 'a' in front of 'killer whale'
to make it make sense.
I think we might put in, Jen, "a dolphin".
Can you put that in for us?
We were able to make that sentence make sense
by putting the word 'a' in front.
It wouldn't have made sense if we had said,
"I jumped into the ocean and I saw dolphin."
It was really good, the person who told me that who said, "A dolphin."
That's how we say it in English.
Can you please say it all together?
ALL: "I jumped into the ocean and I saw a dolphin."
Boys and girls, I'm going to ask you today,
when you come in front of the literacy board
to see what activity you're in,
if you could stand very quietly
just like a good listener over there in front of the board.
Can you do that for me now, please?
You're going to just stand in front.
That's not standing. Listen. I asked you to stand. Beautiful.
So the first thing you need to do
is work together to make your sentence.
(KIDS CHATTER BUSILY)
NICOLE: I think all of the children who are working in their groups
were able to create sentences that made sense
following that structure that I said at the start
and the children in the focus group
achieved the objectives that I had planned for them,
but I was also taking notes in my focus book
of some things that we need to continue on with them.
GIRL: "I jumped into the ocean..."
ALL: "..and I saw..."
NICOLE: And I think it was really good having Jen there
to hear all of these ideas
and hopefully she can implement some of those things into her classroom
to eventually improve her teaching practice as well.