Good Practice

Video Transcript

I’ve started teaching Turkish in Churchfields School. First they sent me to MFL courses; I’ve done my MFL courses and I’ve got my certificate. I did run a club for Year three for last year and the year before – that’s two years - lunchtime club, Turkish club. It’s applied all to Year three children and that was very successful and I enjoyed doing it. And then this year, they offered me to teach in year five’s three classes and it’s really doing well.

In each class in year five, there are about three-four children who speak Turkish. They’re so useful in the classroom, they support me, I use them like teaching assistants really. They support me in different ways, like they are a good model for the other children so it shows that, if they can speak two languages, the other children might think ‘oh, I can do it as well. If Fisiatra can do it, I can do it as well.’ And also it’s built up some of the Turkish speaking children’s’ confidence as well; sometimes they feel like they’re shy to speak their own languages, they think that they’re different. So it builds up their confidence. So they’re really good.

In the first lesson, what I did is, we talked about country – the Turkish population, where Turkey is in Geography. And also we talked about Turkish culture, their religions. And we also talked about how many countries speak Turkish also. There are many countries in the world that also speak Turkish, like Uzbekistan; Azerbaijan, they also speak Turkish as well. I taught the children that it is very important to speak Turkish as well.

When I’ve done my courses, my MFL courses, we’ve been trained to do the planning which guides us on what to include in the planning, so I’m following that programme. With the Turkish, unfortunately there is noting in the website that gives us resources in Turkish language, so therefore we have to do and think and plan our own lesson. So I do everything by myself – power point and some of the planning. And also last year there used to be a Turkish teacher in this school, she left me some resources as well, I just did on top of that.

I used to take my children to Turkish schools on Saturdays, from like nine to eleven-thirty, and I used to stay in school – I used to do voluntary work. At the beginning I started looking after the children out there in the playground, and then I worked as a classroom assistant where, if the teacher was ill, I used to cover the classroom as well. And that’s how my career started. I enjoyed working with the children and I applied for classroom assistant and then come to this now.

I work full-time in Churchfields. I work with the bilingual children, that speak two languages, as English as an additional language, so I support those children. And this year I work with Early Years and Year ones full-time. I work with the parents as well: I link with the parents, inform them with the Turkish language, translate or interpret for the teachers and for the schools or translate some letters. I do coffee mornings and a bit of everything.

In my planning, my Turkish planning, they include the culture as well. I’ve already done the resources for food – a salad named kisir [Turkish bulgur wheat salad]. So I’m going to introduce the name of the food, some of the foods, name of the foods first. And then visually I’m going to take the ingredients into the classroom and we are going to make the kisir, and the children should memorise those words and explain how we did it. So I’m going to mix in the children with the Turkish culture: food, geography, history and a bit of everything else.

When my children were three years old, three and a half years old – I have three children – they all went to Turkish school, a weekend school or Saturday school. That way I didn’t want them to forget their own language first of all, and their culture, music, and everything – they did play some instruments, my son did, and they did Faulkner Turkish dancing, and it wasn’t just reading and writing and included everything. And they’ve done their GCSEs when they were in the secondary school, that’s helped them to learn more about the language as well. And also I know that I made the right decision, my daughter she’s a lawyer and when she was doing her first job she used her Turkish so much, it was very good for her to make a better career. It’s always nice to learn other languages.

Teaching modern foreign language in primary school, the age of the children, they’re quite young, and they love languages because it involves lots of games and activities. It doesn't involve too much reading or writing and they love it, they enjoy it, they jump up and down. And using sign languages and using your body language, it makes them think ‘oh, I'm very clever’ because their understanding level goes up if you use sign languages. Using colour codes is another thing that if you use those colours and the sound, different sound, so that you relate it with English – doesn't matter if it is English it can be any language if they speak another language at home – so they can relate those sounds with something else to be able to remember easily. So we use different colours, other language and the sounds – different sounds.