Page 162 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

162 Chapter 7 a day. When routines, language, literacy, and mathematic activities are taken together, these activities cover 69% of a day at DL2-schools and 60% of the day at Mainstream schools. This is comparable with the two-third from the Henrichs and Leseman (2016) study for transitions, conversations, and language and mathematical activities. Our data showed two differences between the DL2-schools and Mainstream schools regarding activities measured with the snapshot method. Specifically, pupils at DL2-schools were engaged in more language and mathematical activities than pupils at Mainstream schools. It seemed that DL2-schools were predominantly focused on academic activities. The overview in Table 7.11 shows the different aspects on which the school types differed from each other. Table 7.11: Overview of Significant Pairwise Contrasts for Scores on the Snapshot. Activities Mathematical Activities Language Activities Language Use Language Situations with Peers Balanced Language Situation Interactions Peer Interactions Teacher-Focal Pupil Interaction higher in DL2-schools higher in DL2-schools higher in Mainstream schools higher in DL2-schools higher in Mainstream schools higher in DL2-schools The first question about interactions was: with whom is the interaction taking place? Overall about one third of the time the pupils had no interaction with a peer or a teacher. Another third of the time, they interacted with their peers. The second question about interactions was: what kind of teacher interaction is taking place? Comparable with Henrichs and Leseman (2016), the largest amount of time when a teacher and a pupil had interaction it was considered as “didactic” instead of “scaffolding.” The snapshot method observations showed differences between DL2-schools and Mainstream schools in the kind of interactions that took place. While at Mainstream schools focal pupils had more interactions with their peers than at DL2-schools, focal pupils at DL2-schools had more interaction with their teachers than at a Mainstream school. The interaction at DL2-schools was more teacher-led; there were many activities in which the pupils sat in a circle around the teacher, while the interaction at Mainstream schools was more pupil-les, with a lot of free play. The explanation for this could be that the teachers at the DL2-schools follow a more strictly designed curriculum. With more teacher-led and explicit Language Activities, teachers can monitor the input and learning goals for the pupils more closely, which they assume will improve pupils’ vocabulary development. However, during these activities teachers should in fact use high quality interactions, especially conceptually focused