Learning autonomy at Lloyd Street Primary School

Mr Kevin Adams Lloyd Street Primary School East Malvern, Victoria, Australia

At Lloyd Street Primary School, the subject Languages Other than English (LOTE) is using the concept of learning autonomy to allow the students to proceed according to their needs and ability. This requires a method of flexible delivery so the learner can access exercises on an ‘as needs’ basis.
An overview of the strategy is that:

• the lessons are largely delivered by PC –we have a dedicated LOTE room with 15 computers
• the use of PCs encourages students to work at their own pace and at a level relative to their individual rates of learning
  
  
  
  
• an interactive whiteboard is used to introduce new work and for class revision
  
  

• flexible learning allows some year 3 students to be at the VELS level for year 5/6 students and, conversely, a more challenged learner in year 6 could be at a nominal year 3/4 VELS level (this was born out by a LOTE audit conducted in 2006)
• flexible learning allows any less proficient year 5/6 students to ‘re-learn’ Level 1, 2 or 3 work that they don’t know / have forgotten / or never learned
• students move through the curriculum at their own pace, rather than in lock-step, as determined by a class-based lesson.

Flexible delivery exercises

The LOTE course this year will be increasingly self-paced, rather than class-based, to allow students to learn at their own rate. Self-paced programs, such as TaskMagic and Languages Online, give students the opportunity to develop individual language competence, through active participation in purposeful and graded activities and exercises. They also allow slower students to progress at their own pace, rather than being left behind as the weekly program moves on before they are ready. It also allows the faster learners to move ahead and tackle more difficult exercises.
This recognises that students will be at different stages of linguistic and conceptual development as a result of:

• age
• prior exposure to the language
• moving from a school that taught a different LOTE
• motivation to language
• varying language abilities and experiences.

The majority of the lessons are online but some classes will commence a session with group work, especially for songs and games. 

Using an authoring software called TaskMagic, students can complete exercises at home, in the form of games. The exercises can be accessed from the school MyDesktop intranet site. The advantage of an authoring program like TaskMagic is that the teacher can customise the software to individual student needs. They can also produce computer-based games that revolve around topical events in the news or from a current enquiry-based curriculum. (See www.taskmagic.com.au for examples of the games). One student per PC is highly desirable but outside of the current resources available.
Multi-lingual aspects of the curriculum
.As well as Indonesian, which is our prime LOTE focus, students also use Languages Online (www.education.vic.gov.au) and TaskMagic to gain exposure to three other languages - French, German and Italian.
Students are given the opportunity to access the other three languages. They find it easy to complete a lot of the exercises, as the format and script is the same for each language (for example, Level 2 and 3 access counting, greetings, songs and simple conversation in all four languages).
In term 4, grade 6 will be encouraged to work with the German, French and Italian exercises. They may also continue with Indonesian for the first part of each class. Towards the end of the term, they can choose which language they want to select for the lesson.
The reasons for this are:

• to gain exposure to other LOTEs
• to give students a basis for choosing a LOTE at secondary college
• to begin breaking down barriers and prejudices about foreign languages
• to encourage students to learn more about the mother tongue of a parent, where it is one of the four choices.