Case Study

Introduction

Feza Turkish School is situated in the London Borough of Haringey. The school uses the premises but not the facilities of a local secondary school. Parent volunteers help with various activities in the school such as setting up stalls for food and drink, helping teachers to guide children to their classes and helping with classroom support.

The language lesson observed was led by a trainee teacher who was completing her final PGCE practice as part of her school placement for complementary schools. The class consisted of a mixed group of sixteen children ages 11 to 12, years 6 and 7.

Lesson learning objective

The teacher’s lesson plan was clear and laid out step-by-step procedures for achieving the learning objective. She first re-established the ground rules for the lesson and reminded the class of her expectations of their behaviour during the lesson. She then explained the learning objective to the class and moved to asking questions about each of the animal pictures she had placed on the board.

Bu hayvanın adı ne? What is the name of this animal?
Saçları ne renk bu atın? What colour is this horse’s hair?
Atı bana tarif edin desem neler söylersiniz? If I ask you to describe the horse, what would you say about it?

Key adjectives were written on the board and the children were encouraged to look at them. The teacher used the Turkish adjectives each time she asked children to think about a word to describe the horse. She carefully wrote these down on the board, providing children with good models and guidance for forming their own sentences. The relevant sentences were then placed underneath pictures. The language and questions were carefully planned and children were asked to think about their language in progressive stages of complexity. The questions served this purpose very well.

The lesson continued with the children in small groups working with different packs of pictures of animals and adjectives in both English and Turkish. They were asked to choose different adjectives to describe their animals. The teacher and the volunteers moved around the room and helped the children to recognize and match English adjectives with Turkish ones before making a sentence describing their animal.

The children were well supported in the task and responded appropriately.
The teacher provided plenty of visual support. The animal names and adjectives were written on different coloured cards, with additional animal pictures and blank cards ready for new adjectives. She made sure that everyone was involved in the lesson. Parents were strategically placed next to children who found the task more challanging and helped and supported them with their answers.

The teacher stopped and clarified teaching points when the occasion arose. The key to the success of her lesson was her use of Turkish and English simultaneously. This as she explained gave children the chance to link the English words with new Turkish ones and this was confirmed during our interviews with the children after the lesson. Children told us:

'We mainly work in groups so we often find the right word. If not we can ask our teacher or other adults here. We can use the dictionary or sometimes take things home and find out from the internet.'

'I learn Turkish, which helps me to speak to my parents and grandparents and community. I also use it when I go on holiday in Turkey.'

'We do some work which is the same as in my other [maintained] school except it is in Turkish. It helps me to understand it better and my Turkish gets better. It is fun!'

'...For example we were doing some science work on metals and their properties last week. We had the same lesson in my English school last month. We did this in Turkish and English here. That means it was a good revision for me. It was also fun to learn that names of some metals were almost identical in Turkish and English.'

'This school teaches me how to be proud of being Turkish as well as British. I have the best of both worlds. It can’t be bad!'

When a teacher was asked about the strengths of their school, he replied:

'I think our school is an important bridge between the Turkish speaking community and the mainstream [English speaking] culture as we try to link the positive aspects of both worlds in our work here. We also teach children to be proud of their identities while learning to respect other cultures.'

Parents said:

'Our children are learning about their culture as well as getting help with their work from full-time school.'

But parents also had some concerns:

'There are no facilities for our children to use here. For example we have no access to computers. Also some teachers from overseas do not have a real understanding of the system here so their approach to teaching is different from those who are trained in the UK. We need more qualified teachers as well as funding for training and resources so that what my son gets here is more in line with what he is getting in his full-time school.'

About the School