Scaffolding for language students: Building on knowledge of the RDC

To support all students, our goal is to create learning experiences that work for every young person in our classroom. We want to have multiple pathways to acquiring new vocabulary and our students will learn based on the repetition of these many different activities.

Ways to scaffold:

• When teaching new words, use pictures, tangible examples, common associations, target-language equivalents and personal connections
• Encourage pair and small group discussions to lower the affective filter
• Through games and other class activities provide opportunity for guided brainstorming, to practice vocabulary retrieval and to establish what they already know

Let’s look at teaching vocabulary on the topic of work (les métiers) while hearing from three young professionals who returned to the RDC. For a previous unit on the RDC, I focused on the theme of music. This time I wanted to return to the same location and have my students build on their previous learning about products and practices in the Congo. Here are a set of slides that are a few lessons that you can add to your unit on professions. You will see that I have intentionally included authentic documents from the RDC to address this topic.

In addition, I also made activities that would give students enough repetition with the vocabulary in order to build proficiency for vocabulary for professions. Here are all the different activities that use and re-use the vocabulary: (Please note, in the slide presentation, I have explanations of these games and activities in the speaker notes, if you are not familiar with them already.)

• Organize names of professions into different categories (following students’ own opinions) in the chart
• Two slides with a personalized question using the vocabulary for professions
• Game: students list all the professions they can think of
• Three videos of young professionals with a chart to fill in; students have to identify the profession of each person interviewed
• Famous people, guess their profession
• Game Zip Zap Zop, make sentences to indicate a famous person’s profession
• Vocabulary sheet with a practice sheet for guessing the professions described
• Guessing game where students guess the profession given hints
• “Stand up if” activity with professions
• Guessing game with famous people, professions given as clues
• Given a choice of two professions, students have to choose one, then physically move to the side of the room that represents their opinion.
• Another game: student recall the words for professions

The most important piece of instruction that we can give students to ensure that they learn is repetition. In this series of lessons you can see multiple opportunities to hear the same vocabulary. The varied pathways serve to meet students’ needs. And, in the final assessment, students are creating learning materials that are then used in class.