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EDF5807 Assignment 2
Word Count: 3449
Name: Alan Deng
Student ID: 21449104

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Both of my parents migrated to Australia in the late 1980s and neither of them could not
speak English for many years. As a result, the only time I used English was at school. I was
an English as an additional language/English as a second language (EAL/ESL) student
when I started school, and Ive experienced the difficulties associated with learning English
without support at home. I believe that there are many EAL students who face similar issues
today in that they dont have someone to practice English with outside of school. Due to the
limited amount of time students spend at school, I believe that it is important for students to
be engaged whilst they are learning and using language, in order to take in as much as
possible.
The purpose of this study was to investigate how I could engage an EAL/ESL student with
her reading and writing. I also looked at the effectiveness of different teaching strategies in
student engagement. The idea for my research inquiry was based on my own experiences
as an EAL student, as well as my desire to further develop my professional knowledge about
students from different backgrounds. For my study, I worked with a girl named Megan
(pseudonym) who was originally from China but started her primary schooling in Australia. In
terms of data collection, I used a combination of observations, examples of lesson planning
and student work samples from my literacy group lessons. In this study, I have looked at my
current understanding, professional learning questions and the future implications of my
study.
Rationale

I set out to learn about EAL students and the types of struggles that they face as literacy
learners. I also wanted to explore how different teaching strategies impacted on student
engagement. I chose this topic because I wanted to develop my professional knowledge of
students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. For literacy groups, I was working with the
lowest ability group (all the Grade 1/2s in the learning centre were sorted into groups), where
half of the students came from an EAL background. Ive learnt a lot about AusVELs at
university and whilst lesson planning for placement, and I felt that it was important to gain an
understanding of the ESL Developmental Continuum to extend my professional learning of
student backgrounds.

I also wanted to research something that embodied the schools principles. I completed my
placement at Silverton Primary School a highly multi-cultural school located in a low socio-

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economic area. The school is inclusive of diverse backgrounds and has a high EAL
community. The school is grounded in constructivism and believes in 60% student-centred
pedagogy (e.g. group work, discussion, questioning) and 40% teacher-directed learning (e.g.
direct instruction). Both of these learner perspectives informed my investigation, as well as
inquiry-based learning and dialogic pedagogy (both grounded in constructivism). The school
is also part of the Microsoft Innovative Schools World Tour and uses a lot of ICT in the
classroom. I have incorporated a technological pedagogy in the form of a YouTube video in
the lesson I taught. The three levels of engagement described by Fredricks, Blumenfeld and
Paris (2004) also formed part of my professional learning questions in my investigation.

My research has also allowed me to reflect on the teaching strategies that worked and those
that didnt, which has helped me develop my reflective practice. For example, there were
students who werent engaged because they didnt understand what to do, and there were
students who werent emotionally engaged and didnt want to do the task two types of
disengagement requiring different strategies. I have begun to critically reflect on both my
own practice as well as the enabling and obstructing conditions that impact upon [my] work
with students in [the] classroom (Churchill et al., 2013, p. 481).

My research inquiry provided me with an opportunity to work with other teachers in my

literacy group, who have a lot of experience with professional knowledge and practice in
teaching, as well as with research projects. In literacy groups, there were two teachers who
collaboratively taught the lowest group of kids. Both of the teachers acted as my mentor, and
this was helpful to my professional learning because it provided me with current insights on
EAL students that will inform future practice. My research has taught me about how I can
engage EAL students and to some extent, why students become disengaged in class (e.g.
disruptive behaviour and behavioural issues). However, that is just the tip of the iceberg. I
havent looked at behavioural issues in detail, and I havent had any experience of this
nature (e.g. contacting the childs parents, identifying home issues and getting to the root of
the behaviour). As a teaching professional, I will need to be aware of a wide range of issues
beyond what has been taught in my degree, and have the current knowledge to deal with
these issues as they arise (Churchill et al., 2013, p. 549).

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Literature Review
Engagement is the act of students engaging with, or being engaged in their work (Churchill
et al., 2013, p. 312). According to Fredricks, Blumenfeld and Paris (2004, p. 62-63), there
are three levels of student engagement: behavioural, emotional and cognitive. Students who
are behaviourally engaged are involved with the task at hand, and are not disruptive to the
class (e.g. free of negative behaviour). Emotionally engaged students are interested in what
is being taught to them and experience reactions that indicate their enjoyment (e.g. smiling
and eye contact). Students who are cognitively engaged are invested in their learning and
seek challenge (e.g. writing a full page about a topic when theyre only expected to write a
half-page).
Past research suggests that EAL students fail to engage with reading and writing tasks
because they do not see the real value of learning to read and write (Cho, Xu & Rhodes,
2010). This is particularly noticeable in Chinese classrooms, where the students motivation
for developing literacy skills is to perform well in tests and examinations (Lo & Hyland, 2007).
This can be overcome by linking classroom activities to the students literacy activities
outside of school: what they do at home and what they bring to school with them their
virtual schoolbags (Lo & Hyland, 2007; Cho, Xu & Rhodes, 2010; Thomson, 2002). Being
able to write about topics that interest the students provide them with an opportunity to
express themselves. Not only does this engage the students, but it gives students the
chance to share what they already know (Hook, 2010). This is especially beneficial for low
literacy learners as it allows them to view a reading or writing activity as something that has
real relevance and value to them (Lo & Hyland, 2007; Cho, Xu & Rhodes, 2010).
Lo and Hyland (2007) looked at student engagement and motivation through the
development of a writing program for ESL students. In the classroom, writing topics are set
by teachers, and there is often a lack of a real audience for the students to write to (Sze,
Chapman & Shi, 2009). Lo and Hyland (2007) believe that it is important for students to
move away from traditional writing conventions for tests and examinations, and focus on
writing for an audience. Although grammatical accuracy was compromised, the high level of
student engagement in their study was reflected in the students enthusiastic approach to
their writing for different types of audiences, and this provided the students with confidence
in their writing ability (Lo & Hyland, 2007).

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Miller (2013) identified that it was important to select relevant and engaging texts for EAL
students in order for them to make connections to their own lives, and use second language
principles to comprehend text. Students become disengaged when they are given texts to
read that lack relevance or cognitive challenge (Cho, Xu & Rhodes, 2010). Adoniou and
Macken-Horarik (2007) also identified the importance of challenging texts in their study of
Scaffolding Literacy (SL) in ESL students in Australian primary and secondary classrooms.
SL pedagogy is grounded in constructivist theory, and is designed to scaffold students to
read and write challenging and age-appropriate texts (Adoniou & Macken-Horarik, 2007). As
the chosen texts are challenging, scaffolding is required. SL provides teachers with a
sequence of teaching strategies that promote student engagement with written texts
(Adoniou & Macken-Horarik, 2007). These strategies included modelling and questioning.

Hook (2010) looked at oral language and the use of shared reading in supporting ESL
language development. Building from previous research, Hook (2010) developed a shared
reading program with a group of Grade 3 ESL students in an Australian classroom, focusing
on explicit reading and narrative writing techniques. Shared reading requires high levels of
student engagement in order to maintain interest, focus, and to help students achieve
positive outcomes (Hook, 2010). In the study, students were first given time to talk and make
connections with the book. This helped the students engage with the material and gave them
room to share their thoughts. Students eventually explore and extend ideas beyond the text,
which serves as a starting point for students to construct their own writing (Hook, 2010).
Hooks (2010) study bears a resemblance to Adoniou & Macken-Horariks (2007) work on
SL, as both programs help scaffold and guide students through reading and writing, helping
them move from teacher-directed learning to taking responsibility for their own learning.

Investigation

In the present study, I looked at how I could engage Megan with her reading and writing. I
looked at whether Megan was showing progress along the ESL developmental continuum
assessment in two activities: a narrative writing task and guided reading groups. This was a
formative type of assessment that I used to diagnose Megans needs. During reading and
writing activities, I examined the effectiveness of teaching strategies in engaging her. Prior to
the study, I observed Megans level of engagement with what was currently being taught in
class. The class had been completing writing tasks related to the Sky High movie for the

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majority of the year. My understanding of student engagement at that stage was that the
students enjoyed watching the movie but were disengaged with the Sky High activities
because they have been studying the movie for a long time.

For my literacy lessons, I decided to teach something completely unrelated to Sky High
because I felt the students would be more engaged with something that was fresh, different
and had an element of humour and familiarity. For each block of literacy groups, I taught a
whole class lesson on problem and solution in narrative writing for an hour, and then ran a
20 minute guided reading session with a small group. In order to cater for EAL students, I
taught my narrative lesson around a short animation clip of three hungry birds. My prior
understanding was that using visuals, pictures and multimedia would help in engaging EAL
students. The students watched the animation clip, had a class discussion and then wrote a
narrative story based on the clip.

For my study, I worked with a group of five EAL students on their writing and guided reading.
I chose Megan for my study because she was also in my home group and I had built a
rapport with her. This allowed me to have deeper insight into her strengths and weaknesses
in literacy outside of literacy groups. I did not directly tell the students what to write, nor did I
help them with their spelling, grammar or punctuation. However, I corrected their work and
scaffolded their learning by reading aloud what they wrote and asking them questions about
their writing (e.g. what happened next?).

My teaching strategies included getting to know the students, modelling a task, discussion,
group work, scaffolding and questioning. I used these strategies in my shared/guided
reading groups and my narrative writing lessons. I modelled how to speak with expression
during guided reading and facilitated group discussions to hear the students ideas about
what they could write in their narrative stories. I used questioning to scaffold my students
understanding during guided reading, starting with closed-ended questions and gradually
moving onto open-ended questions to promote group discussion.

The following criteria formed part of my observations in my investigation:

Behavioural engagement: Megans behaviour during reading and writing.

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Emotional engagement: Her body language and facial expressions during reading and
writing.
Cognitive engagement: The amount of writing Megan completed and how much she
participated during reading groups.

Data Collection and Analysis

The types of data I collected included narrative lesson planning (guided reading questions),
and professional journal entries of my observations of my participant over the period of a
week (the equivalent of four hours of teaching). See Appendix A for my guided reading
questions and Appendix B for my journal entries of my observations. I also collected samples
of work by my participant for the literacy lessons that I planned and taught.

Along with observations, I looked at Megans reading and writing progress along the ESL
Development Continuum. My hypothesis was that a marked improvement in Megans writing
would indicate that she was cognitively engaged with the narrative writing activity. If my
hypothesis was proven, it would also indicate that my teaching strategies were effective in
engaging an EAL student with her writing. I have included three writing samples of her work.
This can be found in Appendix C. The first writing sample (C.1) is from the beginning of the
year (mid-February). The second writing sample (C.2) is from just before placement started
(mid-April) and the third writing sample (C.3) is after the two literacy lessons I taught (May).

Megan's writing was assessed at an A1.3 level on the ESL Developmental Continuum at the
beginning of the year. Megan's writing sample during my two lessons shows an improvement
from her previous writing samples, and she is currently progressing towards A2 on the ESL
Developmental Continuum. This supports my hypothesis that Megan was engaged with the
writing task. In her writing (Appendix C.3), Megan used familiar vocabulary and spelt high
frequency words correctly (e.g. they, then). Megan used some irregular past tense verbs
correctly (e.g. went, saw). She does not use the conjunction 'and' to join clauses, however,
full stops are used with some consistency. She has not used full stops in previous writing
samples, indicating improvement in her understanding of punctuation. A further indication of
improvement can be seen in the way she self-corrected her misspellings of then, they and
cant. Megan writes with both uppercase and lowercase letters but hasnt learnt to

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distinguish when to use uppercase and lowercase, which is consistent with a student
progressing towards A2.

My data for Megans reading is based on observations of her engagement with the text, the
teacher and others in her guided reading group. Megan was assessed at an A1.3 level at the
beginning of the year, and is progressing towards A2. As written in Appendix B.1, Megan
reads clearly. She does not rely on the teacher but at times does not understand what she is
reading. Although Megan is a capable reader, she did not appear engaged with the reading
activity.

Discussion

Writing

Previous research has shown that EAL students are engaged with writing when the tasks
make meaningful connections to their interests and personal backgrounds (Lo & Hyland,
2007). While getting to know the students, I found out that watching ABC3 was a common
interest amongst them a channel devoted to childrens cartoons and entertainment.
Therefore, I wanted to incorporate an age-appropriate animation into my lesson with similar
content. After I showed the animation, I facilitated a class discussion about what happened
in the video, and I asked the students to identify the characters, the setting and the plot. I
learnt to moderate discussions by using the key questions I had written in my planners to
bring the discussion back to a point of relevance. This helped minimise off-topic discussion
and connect the students prior knowledge with lesson content (Hook, 2010). Adoniou and
Macken-Horarik (2007) showed how choosing age-appropriate texts allowed a disruptive 11
year old ESL student to become engaged with constructing his own narrative text, using the
writing techniques that were explicitly taught to him. Megan was very engaged with the
animation particularly with the three birds trying to get the cupcake. She went into great
detail in conversation about how she bakes with her mother. The enthusiasm in her voice
and her body language showed me that she was emotionally engaged with the task. In
terms of behavioural engagement, Megan was well behaved during the writing lesson, as
noted in Appendix B.

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Looking through Megans writing book throughout the year, I noticed that her writing sample
(Appendix C.3) contained the most amount of writing she has completed thus far.
Additionally, Megans writing during my literacy lessons demonstrates improvement and
progress along the ESL Developmental Continuum. This shows me that she was cognitively
engaged and challenged herself. It has been established that students require challenging
activities for cognitive engagement and development of higher order thinking skills (Adoniou
& Macken-Horarik, 2007; Cho, Xu & Rhodes, 2010). The animation clip was a challenging
task because it required the students to remember what happened during the video and use
the narrative writing techniques that were taught to them in previous weeks.

Reading

Scaffolding and questioning were the key teaching strategies that I used to promote student
engagement during guided reading. Adoniou and Macken-Horarik (2007) used questioning
to scaffold the students learning of reading and writing. The studys early guided reading
strategies involve telling the students what happened during the story, as this would help the
students with their prediction when they read the story as a group. In comparison, I relied on
pre-reading prediction questioning (e.g. what clues does the title give us?) and follow-up
questions during and after reading the book to engage the students with the meaning,
structure and visual cues. By asking questions throughout the session, I helped the students
understand the book without telling them what the book was about. By scaffolding the
students reading in small steps, the teacher supports the student to work within their zone of
proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978; Adoniou & Macken-Horarik, 2007).

Megan was quite disengaged during the first guided reading lesson. See Appendix B.1.
Emotionally, she was bored. Cognitively, she wasnt challenged. This made her act out by
getting out of her seat. In order to engage her, I reflected on my lesson that day and made
room to incorporate my students backgrounds into my next lesson. As noted in the literature,
texts should be challenging to stimulate engagement but questions should be formulated so
that students are able to answer (Adoniou & Macken-Horarik, 2007). This encourages
students to develop critical thinking skills, moving from lower order thinking skills (e.g.
remembering factual information from the text) to higher order thinking skills (e.g. exploring
and extending ideas beyond the text) in Blooms taxonomy (Adoniou & Macken-Horarik,
2007; Hook, 2010; Churchill et al., 2013). In the second lesson (Appendix B.2), I asked

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questions in a logical order and followed-up on students responses building from the
things they said about their personal lives and linking it to the guided reading. For example,
when Megan said that she went swimming in a pond when she lived in China, I asked the
other students about their experiences with swimming.

Implications

My research inquiry was helpful to my teaching practice because it helped me explore

strategies to diversify my teaching to cater to different groups of students and their ability
levels. My finding that Megan was engaged with constructivist teaching practices is in line
with the schools principles and pedagogies. Additionally, as the school has a high EAL
community, it means that these teaching strategies and activities could help other low
literacy learners with EAL backgrounds. In terms of what I would have done differently in the
study, I would have liked to have looked at on-task and off-task behaviour and compared this
with engagement. For example, when Megan was reading, she was on-task and reading
satisfactorily but she wasnt engaged with the text. I would have liked to have focused more
on my reflective practice and how I was able to use that to engage her in the next lesson.

Conclusion

Ive learnt that students are very engaged by tasks that they can relate to and involve their
personal backgrounds. In addition to Megan, the whole literacy group was very enthusiastic
about the animation and narrative writing task, and this translated into marked improvements
in their writing (e.g. well-formed and logical sentences with accurate grammar and use of
punctuation). Scaffolding and questioning was useful in engaging EAL students with their
reading as it challenged them to think critically about the texts in front of them.

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References
Adoniou, M., & Macken-Horarik, M. (2007). Scaffolding Literacy Meets ESL: Some
Insights from ACT Classrooms. TESOL in Context, 17(1), 5-14.
Cho, S., Xu, Y., & Rhodes, J. A. (2010). Examining English Language Learners' Motivation
of, and Engagement in, Reading: A Qualitative Study. Reading Matrix: An
International Online Journal, 10(2), 205-221.
Churchill, R., Ferguson, P., Godinho, S., Johnson, N. F., Keddie, A., Letts., WVick, M.
(2013). Teaching: Making a difference (2nd ed.). Milton, QLD: Wiley.
Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School Engagement: Potential of
the Concept, State of the Evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59-109.
Hook, E. (2010). ESL students: learning through talking. Practically Primary, 15(2), 13.
Hyland, F., & Lo, J. (2007). Enhancing students' engagement and motivation in writing: The
case of primary students in Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(4),
219-237.
Miller, J. (2013). Communicative Literacy Pedagogy: Engaging EAL students in Reading
Comprehension. English in Australia, 48(1), 36-45.
Sze, C., Chapman, M., & Shi, L. (2009). Functions and Genres of ESL children's English
writing at home and at school. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 19(1), 30-55.
Thomson, P. (2002). Schooling the Rustbelt Kids: Making the difference in changing times.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Appendix A.1

Literacy Groups: Guided Reading Questions (Bugs for Breakfast) - 27/05/14

Focus verbs

Before
What clues does the title give us? What will the ducks be doing?
What are the ducks doing on the front cover? Floating on the water.
What are the frogs doing? Sitting on the leaf.
What are the fish and bugs doing? Swimming in the water.

During
Page 2. What doing words are on this page? Wake, woke, find.
Explain the difference between wake and woke.
Page 4. Walked vs. ran. Mother Duck walked and the little ducks ran why do you think this
happened?
Emphasise the expression of Splash!
Page 8. Looked, sitting use a real example of sitting and looking at each other.
Page 10. Link between the ducks swimming and the students swimming.

After
Where did Mother Duck go? What was she doing?
What were the little ducks doing?
Can you find a doing word?
Can you use _______ in a sentence? Use verbs identified in the story.

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Appendix A.2

Literacy Groups: Guided Reading Questions (Bugs for Breakfast) - 29/05/14

Focus past, present and future tense of verbs

Before
What clues does the title give us? What did the ducks do?
When do you think the story took place yesterday, today or tomorrow?

During
Page 2. Explain the difference between wake, woke and will wake.
Page 4. What is the difference between walk and run? What tense are these words in? What
is the past and future tense for these words?
Page 8. Look and looked, sit and sat. Discuss the differences.
Page 10. The ducks swam in the water. Is this past, present or future tense? Emphasise the
difference between the three tenses: The ducks swam in the water, the ducks are swimming
in the water, the ducks will swim in the water.

After
What did the little ducks do?
How do you think the frog and fish felt when the ducks looked at them? How do you think
they felt after the ducks didnt decide to eat them?
Can you find a doing word in past tense?
Can you use _______ in a sentence in future tense? Use verbs identified in the story.

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Appendix B.1

Literacy Groups: Journal Entry of Observations and Thoughts - 27/05/14

During writing time, students wrote a narrative based on a short animation about three little
birds. Megan worked very well. She appeared very engaged with the task as she enjoyed
the concepts in the animation (birds, cupcakes) and this reflected in the amount of writing
she did. She worked quietly and did not get out of her seat. Megan tried to sound out words
but was reluctant to write down what she had sounded out. Apart from the first letter of each
word, she does not seem to understand the sounds of the letters that she is sounding out.
Megan has a good grasp of the alphabet but has issues with placement and usage of
uppercase letters.

For guided reading, students in my group read the Bugs for Breakfast book. I didnt go
through all of the questions because the group was very disruptive during the lesson.
Megans reading was very clear and coherent. She sounded out unfamiliar words and selfcorrected her reading without any prompts. She understood the difference between the
different sounds of the two characters in the story Dilly Duck and Dally Duck. However,
Megan struggled with the expression of words. Her reading was monotonous. For example,
Splash! Splash! Splash! was read with no expression in her voice or on her face. Megan
did not understand what splashing was. Throughout guided reading, Megan appeared
disengaged as she looked out the window multiple times, yawned and kept getting out of her
seat.

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Appendix B.2

Literacy Groups: Journal Entry of Observations and Thoughts - 29/05/14

For guided reading, the students in my group continued with Bugs for Breakfast for guided
reading. The focus of the lesson was verbs and their tenses. Before the students began
reading, I modelled the reading for them, emphasising the bold words and the characters
talking marks, and varying my voice. During the session, I also asked a set of before, during
and after questions. These questions resulted in the students having a meaningful group
discussion, about the types of activities they do every day. Megan was a lot more engaged
during the discussion and grasped the concept of verbs well. She shared her experiences
with swimming and how she splashed in the water. Megan showed an improvement in the
way she used her voice. Although she was still very monotonous, I could see her trying to
mimic the way I read the story. She did not get out of her seat during the guided reading
session and was listening well when the other students spoke.

In terms of writing, students continued writing their narrative about the three little birds
animation. Megan was engaged with the task and worked well during the lesson until she
encountered a problem she did not know how to end the story. This was a challenge that
she faced and I prompted her to remember what happened in the animation. However, she
became very frustrated and ended up crossing out what she had written and rewriting the
ending. Megan was able to finish her narrative story but what she had rewritten for her
ending was for the most part what she had initially crossed out, except the first version was
more coherent. Although she rewrote the ending, it was good for her to think about what she
was writing it showed me that she was engaged with the task.

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Appendix C.1

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Appendix C.2

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Appendix C.3

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