Trevor Davies, Primary Languages Coordinator, Wiltshire Hardenhuish School Chippenham

Having a child who is a native speaker of the primary classroom's new language can be a very daunting prospect, especially if the teacher is not a confident linguist. Maintaining that child's motivation and challenging their cognitive development can also be difficult.

However, there is great potential to use the native speaker child as a linguistic resource for the benefit of the class as well as to boost the child’s own self-esteem, confidence and language development, and possibly their integration within the class if this is an issue.

Here is a selection of practical strategies you could use to involve native speaker children in primary languages lessons. Not all strategies will work with all children. The characteristics of the individual child need to be at the heart of your decisions about which may be suitable and when trying them out.

You can find further ideas and issues to consider in planning for native speakers in the responses on this topic from members of the Primary Languages Forum.

Strategies for oral work

Modelling pronunciation
Use the native speaker child to model pronunciation of difficult words. Asking the child to model particular phonemes that are typically difficult for English speakers can be especially useful, such as 'u' or the rolled 'r' in French. Set the child a task to think of as many words as possible containing a particular sound. You could even ask the child to write the words on a piece of display paper to present to the rest of the class.

Recording the language
Use your native speaker child to record important vocabulary for other children in the class to access when they need it. Mini sound recording devices can be bought fairly cheaply and you can now also buy recordable postcards with 10 seconds recording time. Use the postcards to make an interactive topic display featuring the child’s recordings.

Reading stories and texts
Reading stories aloud can be excellent for the native speaker child’s own development. You could encourage the child to think about using speed of delivery, intonation and expression to convey meaning. It can also be a good way to develop the other pupils' listening skills.

Create your own texts for the native speaker child to read – they could even write their own short text on a given topic, and ask the class to listen for specific pieces of information. You might even ask the child to make up a few questions in English, to ask the class after the reading.

Asking questions in group work
Most children find answering questions easier than asking them, so having a child who is happy to ask questions of others can be useful. It can also benefit the native speaker child’s development as they will need to think about simplifying their language for the other pupils.

Setting a class to work in groups can be far more efficient than teacher-centred question and answer sessions - a confident native speaker can be as valuable as an extra Teaching Assistant.

Checking gender
Gender is a concept that many pupils find difficult to understand and needs constant reinforcement. Ask the native speaker child to listen just for gender agreement and to signal when they hear an inappropriate match. Making gender a focus whilst practising a topic can be useful for the whole class, including the native speaker child - I have come across lots of native speaker children who are uncertain about some genders.

Depending on the character of the child and their integration within the class, this could be a competitive listening activity between the native speaker and rest of the class, e.g. less than 5 gender mistakes during an activity and the class wins, more than 5 and the native speaker wins! This activity can be used for any type of language feature you wish to focus on, from grammar to pronunciation.

Modelling role plays
Children often need a model to watch prior to practising role plays with a partner. Use the native speaker child as often as possible to provide a good model of pronunciation.

Developing intercultural understanding
Take every opportunity to encourage the native speaker child to talk about their personal experiences of life in another country. This can be a great stimulus for discussion and comparison with the experiences of the rest of the class. Try to give any such discussion a focus, such as a particular festival, or tradition. Always talk to the native speaker child first to ensure they do not feel put on the spot when they might not feel prepared nor have much to say!

Leading activities
If the native speaker child is sufficiently able and confident, try asking them to teach some vocabulary to a small group or individual. Try to talk the child through what leading the activity involves and afterwards, review how they felt it went both for them and their 'pupils'. If the child is not confident to actually teach something, a native speaker can be a great help working with a small group with their work.

Strategies for written work

Children may be orally bilingual but have limited writing skills in their first language. This is especially typical of children who have moved from education through the first language before engaging in much formal writing.

In such cases, the child may tend to spell words phonetically or confuse the spelling of similar sounding words. The more you are aware of this as the teacher, the more you can help native speaker children develop their first language skills. This also provides opportunities for whole class work on phonemes.

Checking spelling
Plan to make a set number of spelling mistakes in a given text, either on paper or on the whiteboard. Announce to the class that there are errors in the text and ask the native speaker child to help spot them.

You could also design the activity so that some errors appear in words that only the native speaker child is likely to know, words unfamiliar to the rest of the class, and some errors appear in words that all the whole class know. This encourages all the children to read the whole text carefully.

Enhancing text
If you are using a text with the whole class, ask the native speaker child to alter it in a certain way:

• Add five adjectives
• Add three connectives
• Add two opinions
• Add five cognates that you think the class might be able to guess
• Make all the sentences negative

The resulting text can be shared with the whole class and used as a teaching resource. If confident enough the native speaker child may like to explain the alterations.

Linking literacy and languages
Bring languages into literacy lessons by asking the native speaker child to consider how a feature of English that you have explained, works their language e.g. sentence structure, punctuation, script etc. Think about using example texts from the new language to analyse any of the above.

This has proven a successful strategy for focusing English-speaking children’s minds on features of the language rather than the meaning. The native speaker child could also check to see whether other children’s theories about language structure are correct when the meaning of the text is revealed.

Revising and expanding vocabulary
Ask the native speaker child to make up puzzles and activities for the rest of the class to use in practising vocabulary. The child could work in a group with one or two able classmates. Activities might include:

• Odd one out: choose 4 words of which three are linked in some way e.g. meaning, rhyme, containing a specific phoneme etc.
• Word strings: join lots of words together in one long string. The task is to identify the word boundaries that break the string into the original individual words.
• Hidden words: make a word string as above but include some random letters so that the original words are even more hidden.
• Word halves: think of a group of words, then split each individual word in half and write all the halves on a piece of paper. Present them randomly for others to match up.
• Jumbled sentences: write all the words from a sentence on separate pieces of paper, and then present them randomly. The task is to re-order the words to form a comprehensible sentence (not necessarily the original one!)
• Ink blots: using a text that is already familiar to the class, ask the native speaker child to think carefully about which words in the text the class should remember. The child then covers these words with an ink blot for the other children to try to recall.

You will probably find that the native speaker child will be keen to be involved in marking children’s work.  A good activity that encourages development is to ask the child to evaluate how easy/difficult each activity was for the other children. This is a good way of revising previously learnt vocabulary. Make sure you keep a copy of anything produced for future use!

Creative writing
When the rest of the class are doing basic writing activities in the new language, think carefully about those current or recent objectives covered in English literacy that the whole class have been practising.

Set the native speaker child an equivalent task in their first language e.g. paragraphing, punctuation, inclusion of specific word classes, use of synonyms and metaphors etc. If your level of competence in the child’s first language is not sufficient to assess their work, try enlisting the help of their parents.

When working on a particular topic, you might like to set the native speaker child an imaginative creative writing task to do whilst the rest of the class are engaged in a more structured writing activity, using a writing frame for example.

The child might create a short story using characters familiar to the class or produce a vivid description of a place using vocabulary from the topic of focus. You may even be able to use their work in an activity based on ‘reading stories and texts’, outlined above. Whilst the rest of the class may not understand the whole story, they could be encouraged to listen for specific vocabulary.

Shape poetry and calligrams
Ask the native speaker child to produce shape poetry or calligrams in order to aid the children’s understanding of specific vocabulary. Set particular criteria for the poems or calligrams e.g. rhyming, only using specific vocabulary, leaving deliberate gaps for others to fill. These criteria can be used to vary the expected level of sophistication according to the child’s ability.

Take a look at these examples:

Rouge comme les fruits de Mexique
Orange comme les giraffes chic
Jaune comme le sable d’Afrique 
Vert comme l’herbe du paradis 
Bleu comme les vagues du Pacifique 
Indigo comme le papillon d’Asie
Violet comme le cassis de forêt

Postscript
Before writing this guidance, I sought advice from members of the Primary Languages Forum. You can read all of the informative responses I received here - Primary Languages Forum - involving native speaker children.