Case Study

Introduction

Guru Gobind Kahalsa College is a successful independent Sikh school, one of the highest performing schools in the area. The key to its success is its multicultural ethos. Although it is predominantly Sikh in character, children from other faiths also attend the school. The use of all languages is openly encouraged and there is a positive atmosphere in the school. The school succeeds in utilising children’s languages linking these to their understanding and use of Standard English.

The class and the project

A Year 3 class was working on a project on shops and the transaction process involving money and customer interaction. They had been looking at the kinds of shops in the locality and exchanging information about the customers and the shopkeepers. The class teacher, who speaks fluent Panjabi, extended the work to a role-play situation set in a Panjabi clothing shop. She was interested to see how far the children’s home experiences were reflected and whether this aided their understanding of the transaction process.

She explained the scenario to children:

'There is a Panjabi shop that sells "salwaar" and other types of materials. One group will be customers and the other shop keepers. The customers should try and get the best deal out of their visit and of course be aware that the shopkeepers are after making money for themselves. You can set your own prices and arrange your shop as you like.'

As in many cultures, bargaining in Panjabi culture is used amongst customers in exchange of goods in shop transaction processes. The children have been exposed to bargaining in their communities and were accustomed to it. The teacher explained that they were free to decide how they wanted to approach the role-play. She was keen to see the pupils working out different ideas. She told them they were free to use English and Panjabi but reminded them that they were running or visiting a Panjabi shop. First she put the children into groups and their roles as shopkeepers or customers and asked them to decide what they were going to do - for example customers should agree how hard they would push their luck before finally buying an item. The shop owners had different concerns: How should they arrange their shops? Who would do what? What prices would they charge and what was the limit of such prices to be? Children were given half an hour to discuss and sort things out in their groups.

We could see the children engaging with the role-play. The shopkeepers were eager to please their customers and the customers are already expecting the shopkeepers to satisfy them. None of this had been rehearsed the teacher assured us; the children had only been briefed about their roles clearly. They felt comfortable in these roles, having been exposed to such routine shop transactions within their communities. The conversation was solely in Panjabi in this section even though there were no restrictions on what language to use. As the pupils saw it, this was Panjabi shop selling 'salwaar' so the activity could only be communicated in Panjabi.

The use of Panjabi as the language of cultural experiences was crucial to the role-play. It has a specific use here: it is the language of negotiation and bargaining and it appeared to be used in all aspects: intonation, gestures, sentence construction and specific vocabulary that would reflect the mood of the participants. The children did use certain English vocabulary in their interactions. They might substitute English words when they did not remember the Panjabi, such as 'pound' or choose a quick phrase they found appropriate, such as 'low cost'.

Planning and organising the tasks

The activity was planned to facilitate children’s oral language skills in a collaborative group context. In planning the task, the children debated, challenged each other’s ideas and finally agreed a strategy to deal with the customers. Children used Panjabi and English sentences freely in their discussions exchanging ideas in one and switching half way through to the other or even borrowing single words and phrases. The end result was that the children generated interesting suggestions with the help of their enriched vocabulary.

The teacher told us why she encouraged the use of more than one language in these exchanges:

'All children but especially the bilingual children need to be given opportunities to use their oral skills in both languages…Because I feel that both languages carry the linguistic representations of various experiences in their minds, and often children are not aware that they actually possess these through two language mediums. They rather see the two languages as separate and often not related. I think this is because children do not often have many opportunities to use them together to establish a linguistic interrelationship. I think that through carefully constructed and challenging scenarios children can be given the opportunities to use their linguistic skills orally through collaborative group activities…These children live through these experiences every day of their lives in their communities and it was an opportunity for them not just to debate these but orally to sound out their ideas and by listening to others, but most importantly to test the impact of their own thinking in relation to others in the group. This, I think is the key recipe for further learning.'

'Giving the children the opportunity to use their linguistic repertoires opens up two linguistic channels for interaction. This creates enormous possibilities for the use of vocabulary, key phrases and sentences. Apart from this it gives children further opportunities to take more chances with their own ideas, as having two channels will provide more freedom of choice of vocabulary related to key concepts -hence the production of wonderfully arranged sentences rich with borrowings and switches. When this is achieved i.e. once children discover that they can express themselves and their ideas more effectively, then this opens up enormous new possibilities for the development of new ideas and will gradually result in more risk taking with their own ideas. This is the beginning of the process called ‘new learning’. I haven’t even talked about the benefits of being exposed to other models of speech (or ideas) from other children within the group. It is an exciting process.'

'Going back to your earlier question relating to my role, I simply plan the activity and clearly set out the learning outcomes e.g. to be able to devise a number of cost related strategies in buying or selling. However, I allow children to develop it for themselves, occasionally coming in to provide some direction and prompt them with some key questions. I usually do this not by just coming in and disrupting the flow of the play but presenting myself as a customer or a shop keeper, and children are quite receptive to that. They know who I am and accept me into their game. It makes things a bit more fun then. Essentially, I see the activities as a source of challenges and I think this is the key to learning: to force children’s existing boundaries of thinking. I felt I have achieved some of it here, however I am aware that some other areas of my work remain to be developed further. There were two visible aspects of this activity which I regard as positive. One was an almost simultaneous increase in the level of language use (both Panjabi and English) and the level of interaction between the children. The second was their happy smiling faces as they were playing the game.'

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