Community resources for English

5 Presenting English to the community

In the previous activities you have thought about the English that is available in your school community and how it can be brought into your classroom. There are also ways that you and your class can reach out to the community.

Activity 7: Presenting English to the community

An English assembly is one way to engage with your local community. You could hold an event once or twice a year that brings students’ parents to the school, or brings students from one school to another. This event could be an exhibition of the kind of language work suggested in some of these units – poems that students write, accompanied by drawings, for example. It could be a song, dance and play evening where students recite these poems, sing a song in English or perform a short play in English. (The play could be a poem that they act out, or a part of a story. It need not last more than five to ten minutes.) The whole event need not be all in English, but an opportunity to ‘showcase’ it.

When you plan for the event, students can write invitations in English and in home languages. In order to spread awareness about the event, they can make bilingual posters to display around the school and the community.

In delegating the roles for the event, make sure to involve every student in the class:

  • Some can greet and welcome the visitors in English and in home languages. (‘Good afternoon! Please come in. Please sit down.’)
  • Some can make bilingual announcements during the programme. (‘Now we will have a poem by Class II students.’)
  • Some can use bilingual flash cards to make up words such as ‘Welcome’ and ‘Thank you’.

As the students prepare and put effort and attention into what they are doing, you will find that they reinforce their use of language. As well as learning their own parts in the performance, they will also benefit from listening to other students’ parts as well.

Make sure you involve every child in the class in an activity, including those with learning or physical disabilities.

Afterwards, students can write thank you letters to all those who attended.

Parents are often eager to see what their children are learning in school. They might be unsure of what their children can learn outside what is in the textbook. When they see their children speaking in English, performing rhymes, songs and plays, they will be proud of them. They may then also understand that there is more to learning English than writing in their school notebooks.