NCS extension activities for iPads

Hong Kong's students are predominantly Cantonese speakers; however, there has always been a small set of non-Chinese speaking students in the territory. In recent days, this group has grown, and as a result more teachers need to be aware of how these students can be supported in English lessons. The challenge that most local teachers face with these students is that they tend not to fit the English profile of Cantonese speakers, who make up the majority of students. Typically, Cantonese speakers rely on their exposure to English at school and the textbook as their primary sources of English. As a result, most students are quite uniform in speaking, listening reading and writing English and their vocabulary is homogeneously spread among the four skills. Moreover, prior knowledge is usually constrained to the previous chapters in the textbook and the textbooks prior.    

However for non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students this is usually not the case. NCS students tend to have a more immersive English environment outside of school and use oral English in their lives outside of school. As a result they have access to a wider range of English than their local counterparts, but they predominantly access it orally. However, the quality of their English is often from second language speakers, so while the language may be functional, the range of vocabulary tends to stay literal and utilitarian. Much of their reading and writing is learnt in school and from the same sources as their local peers. As a result they have very little access to rich print and writing activities that help them translate their English knowledge to print. The challenge then comes down to helping these students start from their strengths and broaden their English skills to encompass the other skills and move from functional language to expressive and emotive language

General English profile of NCS students:

• Strong oral English compared to their local peers. 
• Reading of text is usually high when decoding (relying on semantic strategies to guess the word) 
• Underdeveloped comprehension skills from reading
• Weaker writing skills compared to their peers

View a PDF of the presentation

Basic concepts:
Speaking and Listening - Use a virtual whiteboard like Explain Everything to allow orally strong students explain their work or present their information orally.

Reading - look for opportunities for students to identify specific key words in a text and present that understanding. In the example, students are tasked with finding nouns and adjectives that identify objects in the room and using that information to guide their Minecraft construction. Other variants might include looking for direct speech punctuation and speech verbs and using it as a script for creating a cartoon on Toontastic. 

Writing - Here the basic concept is to use visual prompts taken with the camera that students can use to identify one sentence at a time to help them persist with longer and possibly more descriptive writing. Also by having the students go back and read their writing they may find areas where they can add more information or fill in gaps in the writing.

These are a few ways in which I think teachers can start to support their orally strong students with the integration of technology in their lessons.