Sonya van Schaijik and I were pretty excited when Newmarket Primary School offered to launch our Essential Resources SOLO title – SOLO Taxonomy and English Language Learners. Making second language learning visible.
The book is important to both of us – the blurb on the website describes it well – making academic language accessible (in second language and first languages) is an equity issue.
Many classroom teachers will tell you that immersing English language learners in a student-centred English medium classroom, with its everyday richness and opportunities for collaboration, develops their conversational fluency within a year. Although this outcome is gratifying, conversational fluency can mask the lack of academic language proficiency that is vital to future achievement and academic success. SOLO Taxonomy and English Language Learners centres directly on that all-important task of developing students’ academic language skills in both their first language and English.
I don’t know what Sonya imagined but I saw myself being catapulted into new adventure much like Victoria Zacchini experienced as a human cannon ball in 1943. I imagined principal Dr Wendy Kofoed and DP Virginia Kung wrestling the cannon into position in the school’s Rubik’s Cube of a car park ready to catapult the book and its two authors to new adventure.
You can see from the photo that my imaginings were very close to the mark – the cannon and helmet swapped for Samoan lolly leis (ula lole), a riotous bunch of flowers, friends and family meeting and sharing food and drink. We were well launched.
Newmarket Primary School is an incubator for powerful pedagogical practice to be both nurtured and challenged – it is also a place that knows how to celebrate success.
