Hiiraan Online

Researchers suggest new teaching approach will engage those new to English language

Toronto Star
Louise Brown
Education Reporter
Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Canadian schools can do more to help troubled immigrant children by how they teach in regular classrooms, by providing almost twice as much help in English and by requiring all teachers be trained in how to work with these complex learners, say two leading researchers.

As a Toronto District School Board committee meets today to consider how best to help six immigrant groups at high risk of dropping out – including Vietnamese, Portuguese and Spanish-speaking children – research shows a systematic approach to teaching will buoy all students, especially those who struggle most, says education professor Charles Ungerleider, of the Canadian Council on Learning.

He says hundreds of studies show that crystal-clear lessons delivered in smaller chunks, almost minute-to-minute checks to see if children understand – and immediately re-teaching the lesson if they do not – help all children at risk.

"Rather than reorganize the whole school for different groups of struggling learners, you go into the class and reorganize the way you teach them all," said Ungerleider. "It's not a drill-and-kill approach, but a small-step type of instruction proven to help vulnerable kids best."

Trustee Josh Matlow will propose today at a committee meeting that the board do all it can to help students at high risk of dropping out, including those who speak Portuguese (42.5 per cent drop out rate), Spanish (39.1 per cent), Somali (36.7), Vietnamese (24.6), Persian/Farsi (30.6) and Arabic (27.8).

The motion comes as board staff work on a master plan to boost the learning of all groups at risk, as well as a blueprint for an Africentric school to open in the fall of 2009 in a bid to lower the 40 per cent dropout rate among black students.

There has been no call from either Toronto's Portuguese or Spanish parents for such a culturally focused school, possibly because "we've been so insular within our own population, we need to turn outwards and engage with the larger community," says Marcie Ponte, director of Working Women Community Centre, which runs an after-school mentoring and tutoring program for Portuguese children.

Ponte said members of the African-Canadian community may want a black-focused school to counter the discrimination that can be faced by a visible minority, which the Portuguese community is not. Instead, Ponte said her community is emphasizing mentoring, tutoring and promoting role models.

"My parents don't really speak English, so the tutoring has really helped me boost my marks," says Melanie Ferreira, 14, a Portuguese-Canadian student.

While Ungerleider says he would like to see research on how the 100-plus Africentric schools have fared in the United States, he says "systematic instruction" in regular classrooms has been shown in nearly 300 studies to help black students more than others.

Professor Lee Gunderson, another prominent researcher in immigrant learning from the University of British Columbia, says immigrant children can need up to nine years of English as a Second Language help, instead of the current five funded by many provincial governments. "With Canada clearly heading for more and more diversity – in some schools 99 per cent of students don't speak English as their first language – it's not possible to tailor programs to each particular group. You need teachers trained to work with the whole range," said Gunderson yesterday.

First in an occasional series about race and education in GTA schools.

Source: Toronto Star, April 07, 2008