Abstract
This article focuses upon the teaching practices of Shila, a primary school teacher who has taught English in a Singapore ‘neighbourhood’ or government school for the past fifteen years. In Singapore, English has been mandated as the first language of instruction; however, Shila indicates that less then 10% of the students who enter Primary 1 in her school speak English regularly at home. In this research, Shila stories many of the strategies she has successfully used during her fifteen-year career to teach English to her ESL students from Primary 1 to Primary 4.
   Narrative Inquiry, a methodology not currently referenced within the context of Singaporean teaching research, is used to develop Shila’s story. Critical to narrative inquiry is the development of a relationship between the researcher and research participant: "Narrative inquiry is a process of collaboration involving mutual story telling and restorying as the research proceeds” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 4). In the context of Narrative Inquiry, it is significant to note that I was a practicing primary teacher/principal in Alberta Canada for 25 years before moving into university teaching and international consultancies. These are my “narrative beginnings” as an educator coming to bear upon this research (Clandinin, Pushor and Orr, 2007, p. 25). This common experience of ‘coming from the field’ has allowed me to ‘travel across borders’ (Lugones, 1987, p. 11) of understanding with Shila to explore new possibilities for practice at the Primary level within the Singapore English language classroom context.
   This article explores one Primary Singapore teacher’s story of practice as it comes to bear upon the teaching of English to a diverse population of non-English students within the context of a Singapore ‘neighbourhood’ school. It has been my intention in conducting this inquiry to add to our understanding of the landscape of schools as it pertains to the teacher personal and professional knowledge landscape within the Singapore context.

Keywords: narrative teacher education primary best practices

Introduction
This article focuses upon the teaching practices of Shila, a Primary teacher who has taught English in a Singapore ‘neighbourhood’ school for the past fifteen years. The term ‘neighbourhood school’ has traditionally been used by Singapore teachers to denote government schools which are in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods, or within government housing developments that are apartment style rather than those government schools which are in ‘elite’ upper or middle class areas of the city where residents live in condominiums, terrace houses and individual homes. 
   In Singapore, English has been mandated as the first language of instruction; however, Shila indicates that less than 10% of the students entering Primary 1 in her neighbourhood school speak English regularly at home. In this inquiry, Shila stories many of the strategies she has used successfully during her career teaching English to ESL and other Singaporean students from Primary 1 to Primary 4. Also included are some of Shila’s stories about ESL students that serve to illustrate her understanding of her personal practical knowledge or a practitioner’s way of knowing their school and classroom (Clandinin and Connelly, 1994) coming to life within her classroom.  
   It is also important to note that while the process of self-enlightenment in her practice occurs for Shila in this research, the critical focus of this article is how the story of Shila’s practice coming to bear on the lived experience of teaching English in a Singapore ‘neighbourhood’ or a government primary school may inform others about teaching within the context of Shila’s teaching world.  Only by understanding more about the people in educational organizations, is it possible for us to come to some greater understanding of "the nature of human life as lived to bear on educational experience as lived" (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 5).

Methodology: Narrative Inquiry
This research supports narrative inquiry as a methodology and termas described by Connelly and Clandinin (2006, p. 477):

Arguments for the development and use of narrative inquiry come out of a view of human experiences in which humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives. People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and they interpret their past in terms of their stories. Story, in the current idiom is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. Viewed this way, narrative is the phenomenon studied in inquiry. Narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience. Narrative inquiry as a methodology entails a view of the phenomenon. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adapt a particular narrative view of experience as phenomena under study.

Connelly and Clandinin (1990, p. 4) further say of stories and people: "People by nature lead storied lives and tell stories of those lives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of them and write narratives of experience." It is through the transaction of learning from each other that the researcher and participant can begin to understand specific experiences within the context of stories told and retold in community.
   A critical component of narrative inquiry is the narrative conversation that flows back and forth between the researcher and teacher co-researcher as together, they seek to construct a common meaning about the human experience narrated by the teacher co-researcher. While Ochs and Capps (2001) focus more upon the analysis of specific narrative conversations, not a component or the purpose of narrative inquiry, they do offer a description of the interactive narrative process that occurs to support the notion of communally constructed stories in narrative inquiry proposed by Clandinin and Connelly:

In conversational narrative, Bakhtin's ideas about literary dialogue are realized more intensely in that actual, continuous dialogue allows interlocutors to go beyond responding to an already inscribed ("ready-made") text to collaboratively inscribe turn by turn one or more narrative texts. (Ochs and Capps, 2001, p. 30)

Within this interactive conversational process, new understandings about the content and context of a situation can begin to open up possible new imaginings for future stories to be lived.  These new understandings have the potential to change the direction of the lives of both the researcher and the teacher co-researcher’s as new possibilities begin to emerge out of the conversation: "A person is, at once, engaged in living, telling, retelling, and reliving stories" (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 4). Ochs and Capps (2001, p. 2) further explain the collaborative narrative conversation process as follows:

Living Narrative focuses on ordinary social exchanges in which interlocutors build accounts of life events, rather than on polished narrative performances. The narrators are not renowned storytellers, and their narratives are not entertaining anecdotes, well-known tales or definitive accounts of a situation. Rather, many of the narratives under study in this volume seem to be launched without knowing where they will lead. In these exchanges, the narrators often are bewildered, surprised, or distressed by some unexpected events and begin recounting so that they may draw conversational partners into discerning the significance of their experiences. Or, narrators may start out with a seamless rendition of events only to have conversational partners poke holes in their story. In both circumstances, narrative are shaped and reshaped turn by turn in the course of conversation.

The resultant living out of new stories emerging through the process of collaborative conversation can become endless as differing perspectives continue to influence understanding, thereby changing the direction of the story.  
   Narrative inquiry is a form of empirical narrative where the stories, themselves, become the data for research interpretation (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 5). Data for narrative inquiry can be gathered from field notes, interviews, story telling, letter writing, autobiographical and biographical writing, and historical artifacts such as, letters, philosophy statements, newspaper articles and metaphors. Shila’s stories of her practice embedded in this article have been collaboratively storied back and forth between us, as she as teacher co-researcher and I as researcher negotiated our joint understanding of her lived experiences through our continued conversational and written narrative interactions.  Her recollections are supported by student writings and photographic samples collected over her fifteen years as a Primary teacher of English language in Singapore. Each historic artifact and conversation transcript has been dated for authenticity.
   Narrative Inquiry relies upon "apparency, verisimilitude and transferability as possible criteria" to consider when assessing the quality of the research” (Clandinin and Connelly, 1990, p. 7). The audience should be able to relate to the inquiry and to believe it. "A plausible account is one that tends to ring true. It is an account of which one might say, 'I can see that happening'" (1990, p. 8). Narratives leave the audience with a sense that they are not finite. They are simply segments of a person's life waiting to be restoried in the future. Together, Shila and I have storied and restoried her story of practice as new recollections have changed how her story told today, will be lived out tomorrow.
   It is important to note that during the process of collaboratively developing Shila’s stories, we, Shila and I, have attempted to preserve to some degree, her original language in order to allow the reader to more authentically enter her world within a Singaporean English primary classroom. It is also important to note that within the original taped conversations, Shila spoke in an integrative manner when describing her practices.  The various dimensions of language (Bainbridge and Malicky, 2004, p. 10) speaking, listening, writing, reading, viewing and representing were not separated by theme during her teacher talk. In order to simplify Shila’s practice for our audience, we, Shila and I, have either storied one language dimension at a time in each of her story segments: reading, representing (music, movement and drama) and writing, or the transition from one language dimension to another: reading into writing.

The Professional Knowledge Landscape
It has been my intention in conducting this inquiry to add to our understanding of the professional knowledge landscape as it pertains to teachers' personal and practical knowledge within the Singapore Primary School context. The professional knowledge landscape is a metaphor used by Clandinin and Connelly (1995, p. 4-5) to describe space, place and time as well as the positioning of people and their relationships to one another in the world of teaching:

Understanding professional knowledge as comprising a landscape calls for a notion of professional knowledge as composed of a wide variety of components and influenced by a wide variety of people, places, and things. Because we see the professional knowledge landscape as composed of relationships among people, places, and things, we see it as both an intellectual and a moral landscape.

The professional knowledge landscape includes:

…two different kinds of places: the in-classroom where teachers work with students and the out-of-classroom communal, professional place.  We describe the out-of-classroom place on the landscape as a place defined by plot outline of what we call a sacred story of theory-practice in which theory is above practice: university teachers, policy makers and researchers hold knowledge to be given to teacher and student teachers; practice is applied theory; university teachers, researchers and others are the ones authorized to judge the stories of teachers and student teachers. We wrote that the sacred story assumes a metaphor of the conduit (Clandinin and Connelly, 1992) through which theoretical knowledge constructed by the university is handed down to the professional knowledge landscape of teachers and student teachers, one that shapes the professional lives of teachers, students teachers and university educators. (Clandinin, 1995, p.  27).

   Abdullah and Jacobs (2004, p. 1) speak to the conduit metaphor by suggesting that “because teachers, like students, too often have not been involved in ‘a’ decision, they feel little ownership of the change and have little stake in deciding what changes to implement, whether or not those above them in the educational hierarchy formally acknowledge this.  Indeed, after the classroom door closes, many a top-down edict for change flies out the window” as teachers apply their own professional knowledge to ‘make change’ within their classrooms. While Abdullah and Jacobs are referring to Singapore teachers in their study, from a Canadian perspective, I also understand the closing of doors where teachers and children make sense of curriculum together in the ‘in-classroom place on the landscape of schools’. Shila’s story becomes the focus of this article as we, Shila and I, ‘open the doors’ of her classroom through collaborative story telling about her practice to explore the reality that lies within.
   In Singapore, education and teaching are tightly controlled by the Ministry of Education. For example, the draft STELLAR 2006/2007 restricted new curriculum for English in lower primary schools in Singapore, not only directs which stories are to be used by the teachers to teach reading, but is also explicit in terms of which grammar concepts should be taught with each story, which vocabulary words should be introduced, what student activities should be completed, and even what the ‘teacher talk’ in presenting each story to the students should look like. Singapore teachers are trained to follow prescribed techniques.
   Within the research, I could find no Singaporean teacher stories of practice. I must then wonder about the notion of teacher individuality within this environment. As such, I can certainly understand and resonate with Clandinin and Connelly’s (1994) suggestion that "almost all reformers had in place mechanisms to prevent teachers' biographies from making a difference, that is, ways to prevent teachers' stories of themselves from influencing and modifying the developers' grand schemes for reform" (p. 151). Clandinin and Connelly (1995) further suggest that a view that practice is only applied theory can invalidate the personal practical knowledge of many teachers. Teacher voices that tell about teaching in the classroom are silenced as voices of "educational researchers" and other "experts" speak out loudly. These loud voices offer stories about what "good teaching" is that cannot be discredited or discounted because over time, and through word of mouth, they are accepted and referenced as being "preferable." The universality and taken-for-grantedness of the supremacy of theory over practice gives it the quality of a sacred story (Crites, 1971). Crites (1971) makes the point that sacred stories are so pervasive they remain mostly unnoticed and when named are hard to define: "These stories seem to be elusive expressions of stories that cannot be fully and directly told, because they live, so to speak, in the arms and legs and bellies of celebrants. These stories lie too deep in the consciousness of people to be told directly" (p. 294). The relationship of theory to practice has this quality and for that reason we say that the professional knowledge landscape for teachers is embedded in a sacred story (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, p. 8).
   Some teachers choose to live out their teaching lives behind closed doors with the children. Their secret stories of what education is to them are told in 'safe places' because they may conflict with the stories mandated by 'experts' who live on the out-of-classroom places on the professional knowledge landscape. Teachers may hide their secret stories of teaching because they fear retribution or loss of prestige from those positioned above Grumet (1988, pp. 88-89) proposes the following suggestion to counter this trend: “We must construct a special place for ourselves, if our work as teachers is to achieve clarity, communication, and insight of aesthetic practice – if it is, in short, to be research not merely representation". This, then, is our special place - a place where together, Shila, my teacher co-researcher, and I, as researcher, are able to restory in safety, her best practices that lie behind the closed doors of her Singapore Primary English classroom.

Narrative Inquiry. Research Relationships and My Narrative Beginnings
"Narrative inquiry is a process of collaboration involving mutual story telling and restorying as the research proceeds” (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 4). In narrative inquiry, "both the practitioners and the researchers feel cared for and have a voice with which to tell their stories" (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 4). Shabatay (in Witherell and Noddings, 1991, p. 149) offers a description of the caring 'relationship' needed between researcher and research participant in narrative inquiry: “We are able to think, imagine, and feel how the other is thinking, imagining and feeling. We do this neither by projecting our own feeling onto the other nor by remaining detached but by being open to that which is taking place in the person before us.”
   It is of significance to note that I was a practicing primary teacher/principal in Alberta, Canada for 25 years before moving into university teaching and international consultancies. These are my “narrative beginning(s) that speak to (my) relationship to, and interest in the inquiry” (Clandinin, Pushor and Orr, 2007, p. 25). As such, we, Shila, and I, together bring with us a history of coming from ‘the field’ in teaching.  This common experience of living in Primary classrooms with children and driving curriculum from behind closed doors forms our bridge of understanding across other defined borders of practice.

Travelling to Worlds: A narrative metaphor
The narrative inquiry journey is often explained through the use of a metaphor. It seems appropriate that the metaphor used by me, a researcher from Canada, when working with a teacher from Singapore be one that encompasses ‘travelling to other worlds’. Lugones, 1987, p. 11) writes: “Those of us who are 'world' travellers have the distinct experience of being different in different 'worlds' and of having the capacity to remember other 'worlds' and ourselves in them." From this perspective, one can see that my ‘travelling’ to the ‘world’ of my Singapore co-researcher has involved more than a physical traveling across space and place.  It has also involved travelling in a collegial sense where distance and time blur and we are able to stand on the same plain looking outward at the same situation from our differing perspectives, but in such a way that we feel bonded together. From this position, I have come away with a deeper understanding of Shila as person within her ‘world’. De Walter (in Clark, 1998, p. 16) speaks about this interchange process: "People can interact in discourse as travellers if they write and read in ways that render participation in discursive exchange a transformative act crossing an alien place rather than the more defensive act of occupying familiar places.” Through the storying we have done together, I became a part of Shila’s ‘world’ just as she became a part of mine.

Shila’s Story of Teaching Practice – The Beginning
In the following section, Shila stories her narrative beginnings as a primary English teacher in Singapore. She includes many descriptors about the context of the school within which she began and has continued her career, the socio-economics of the families whose children attend the school, and the challenges for the ESL students within her English classroom.  She also discusses the grade configuration her school has adopted which she believes to be so beneficial for her ESL students. 

   I began teaching as a Primary teacher in a ‘neighbourhood’ school.  Most of the time, the classes I took, the students, came from low social economic backgrounds; very few of them will have parents who are degree-holders or who worked in white-collar jobs. Their mothers, most of them are housewives; the fathers are hawkers (I mean they sell at the hawker centres) and blue-collar workers. Very few are engineers; maybe in one class there could be one parent who is a teacher.  So their economic backgrounds vary, you see. 
   And at home most of them speak mother tongue languages: Chinese, Malay or Tamil. The Indians speak English most of the time but the Chinese and the Malay, most of them speak their mother tongue language.  They only use English in school. Even in the canteen, when they speak to their friends, they speak using their mother tongue languages; they are more comfortable with it.
   When I started teaching, I was given a P1 class. In my school, we taught alternate years, P1 and P2, and after that, P1 and then P2 again. They were the same children, unless one transferred in. So, they were moved, en bloc, with me. I think that moving with your children through two grades at the Primary level is beneficial. The class is easier to control, and management wise, if the class is very good, the children can cooperate with the teacher. It’s nice to follow-up with the class from P1 to P2 because you can see the progress. In P1 you can see the progress within a few months and after that, towards the fourth term, you can see the progress of these children even further. If you were to follow-up to P2, that is even much better. You see the fruits of our teaching with these children.
   Primary school in Singapore is very difficult for children who have no background in English. I recall one experience with this China boy.  He couldn’t speak English. He would show signs and I would have to have an interpreter beside him…so when I talked to him, the other boy would help me to interpret to this Chinese boy in English. Then after a while, it won’t take a few weeks, the child was able to speak two words, three words in phrases. I remember that ‘I, you’ he knew how to pronounce. If I asked him to sit; the word sit, he doesn’t know. But after many times, when I looked at the others, when I asked them to sit, he knew that sit means really ‘sit down’, then he would follow. So he would pick up from there. After a few months, he was able to speak in proper sentences, not that fluent but he tried his best to speak. These are the children who are very motivated to learn.
   I was very careful in choosing a child as a buddy for a non-English speaking Primary child like this Chinese boy. I tried to look for one who feels comfortable speaking English and who could respond to me in English and also to this particular child. The buddy was very friendly to others so I’d talk to him first and he didn’t mind helping out with this child.
   The growth in the Chinese boy over the two years with his class was quite amazing.  I was very happy when, in P2, the boy improved more.  It is a satisfaction to see these children grow over a period of two years. In P2, he was more independent. Yah, he was brave enough to approach the others because he could speak and they could understand what he was speaking. Yah, there is improvement over there… so it is amazing to see this.
   The P1 class, they are all mixed. They have Chinese, Malay and Indian so I make sure that I speak English to them. However difficult it is, I try to explain and simplify my words in English. I really pressure them to speak English. It’s a general rule - nobody speaks non-English in class except for the weak ones. Like this particular boy, I buddied him with another boy.
   I stayed in P1 and P2 for about 10 years. Then I taught in P3 and P4 for the next five. Some of those years, I was given the same lot from P3 to P4; some I was given a P3 class again.  One of the years, I got a P3 and the following year I got another P3 class but not a better one, a weaker one. So we have that exposure to conduct a weaker class and a better class.
   Last year, for example, I had this P4 kid from China. She was in my class and she understood English but she couldn’t speak so I tried this guided reading program with her. I called her individually and she did improve. I also got a few of my students to be her friends, to communicate with her, to be with her wherever she went and after a few months, there was a tremendous improvement in her and she did pass her English after that.
   I realize how important having the children for two grades was. I know their strengths, and I also know their weaknesses so when I took them in P3, I knew some students who were weak in language areas for instance, so I can make some plans to get them improved so they can go to P4. So when I get them again in P4, I can manage to carry out whatever I want to do with these kids. 

Reading in the Singapore Primary Classroom: Shila’s Story

“In order for students to learn to read English, they first must know English” (National Reading Panel Update, 2001, p. 24). I wonder what ‘knowing English’ within the Singapore context is, as Shila indicates the following of her students at the Primary 1 level: “They are all mixed. They have Chinese, Malay and Indian so I make sure that I speak English to them.” Shila stories two strategies for teaching reading in Primary 1 and 2 below:

   I remember, I made a booklet of simple passages with some difficult vocabulary words inside. During silent reading, I will call these children, especially the weaker ones, and I’ll let them read. Those difficult words that they can’t pronounce or they don’t know, I highlight them and then I get them to bring the booklets home and ask their parents to help them in their reading. Hopefully, they will get help - maybe not from their parents but from their aunts or their uncles or from their siblings, from their neighbours – it’s just a hope.  But there are parents who try hard to get anybody to help out with their children. I communicate with the parents personally so when the next session we have this reading period comes, I’ll test on the passages again; if they are able to read, I’ll sign. If not, I’ll still highlight the words, the difficult ones and then put a tick or circle them so that they will read again until they manage to get the whole passage done.
   I’ve also used buddy reading during the reading period. When the weaker ones are with the booklets, I get a few students who are able to read to partner with the weaker ones to help them to read. Any progress or any weakness, I get the buddy to report to me - what is it that this child is not able to read?  That strategy I also remembered doing with P1 and P2.

   In the following section, Shila elaborates on how she differentiates the teaching of reading in Primary 3 and 4 according to the specific needs of her students (noted in Tileston, 2005, p. 15). She also recalls using individualized novels (supported by Currie, 1997) with the more advanced students concurrent with leveled readers (supported by Pinnell and Fountas, 2002; Ricky, 2002) for her weaker students to improve at-level reading abilities. She closes this part of her story by explaining how she created a Power Point story-telling presentation to encourage all of the children to read.

   At P3 and P4, I bought a set of literature books and got some students, the better ones, to read these books and I gave them some bookmarks with different activities on them to carry out after reading the books. The weaker ones, I got them to do level readers and once in a while I just checked on their reading.
   The top 20 students in my class of 40, the better readers, got stories from Rohl Dahl and other authors. I didn’t have a focused lesson; I just gave them bookmarks. These bookmarks had different activities that told them what to look for - the characters, the setting, the plot. Each person had a different activity on the bookmark so after reading the whole book, I got them to present it in a small card, what they understood from the character and setting. This is to make sure they really read, you know. Practically everyday, I put aside 10 minutes for them to read. This is when the better ones would take their books and read. After they had finished a book, I transferred some of these books to those who had not gotten them, so they would have a break.
   I also prepared a Power Points for P3 about this one story and I taped my voice. I got them to listen to the tape, so when they listened to the teacher’s voice and the story at the same time, right, they would get very excited and then they would want to try to read it. So I gave them photocopied story parts and got them to sequence the parts. From there I focused on certain vocabulary words inside. And I asked them questions but comprehension is a common area where students have difficulty in answering, especially inferential questions. For a weaker class, I could say 80% could not answer inferential questions. For the better class, I think about 10 of 40 in the class will have difficulty in answering, especially inferential questions.

In connecting Shila’s authentic practice to available literature, it is interesting to note that she quite naturally and without direction from any school authority, linked her classroom practice to recognized ‘best practice’ in areas such as: “a.) efficient activity transitions, b.) emphasis placed on both basic and higher order comprehension skills, c.) teaching strategies, not skills, d.) integration of reading and writing skills, e.) ability-based group assignments and g.) activities made meaningful and challenging” (Best Practice Beliefs,Feb 2004, pp. 2-3). I have to question what this says about the innovativeness of teachers in Singapore and how many of them, by design or good sense, find their own way towards theoretical ‘best practice’.

The use of Representation in English Language Development: Shila on Music, Movement and Drama
Bainbridge and Malicky (2004, p. 362) point out that “drama as playing is a very important type of activity, because it fosters the social and intellectual development of the young child. They cite Vygotsky (1978, p. 102) who states, “Children at play are always above their average age, above their daily behaviour; in play, it is as though they were a head taller than themselves”.  In this section, we see Shila explaining how her children become ‘a head taller than themselves’ in English oral language communication into reading through the use of drama:

   I realised that these little primary students, right, they learn better through music and movement so when there’s a poem with a rhythm or a song attached to it, I’ll get them to read it.  I remember this poem, Little Engine; they will read the poem and after that they’ll sit in rows and they will move like Little Engine and we’ll sing the song at the same time so they will learn reading through those actions. Then I teach them phonics, right, ‘rrr’. I get them to drive ‘rrr’ so they get it. They get to make sounds with actions so they learn. I remembered doing that but I think it’s easier to do actions with P1 and P2. They are really great. 
   I remembered having these three performances. One is the Three Witches. I had this song and I even sewed this black witch’s costume with patches and I got the children to dance on the stage and everybody liked it. And I did this Three Blind Mice play where I sewed this grey-coloured kind of blouse and got them to wear masks or to draw something on their faces and they did these actions. They loved it.  When they practice their drama performances, they will have to read the script, you know. When they read the script, they will have to remember some of the words. And when they keep on practicing this script, it naturally helps them to improve their reading, not 100%, but at least they learn some new words and how to pronounce the words - the enunciation, the pronunciation of these words, so it is like kind of a cycle.
   I also got this one class – a few of them - to participate in this ‘Save Water School Campaign’; they won first prize and, I think, $50. It was a great reward for them. We had this little girl; she wore a Tarzan outfit. She was looking for water and we had another girl wearing this styrofoam shape of a water droplet and some others were jungle trees. Even the weaker ones, they may not be able to write but they are eager to act, so by getting them to act, they are able to make use of the words that I get them to practice. That way, we get to do all these oral performances that built their confidence to use English. I remembered doing these things and I had fun doing them.

The Language Experience Approach - Shila’s Story of Reading into Writing
 The Language Experience Approach (Tompkins, 2005, p. 185; Bainbridge and Malicky, 2004, p. 95) is a widely used primary method to scaffold meaningful lived experiences of students into opportunities to create group written stories. In Singapore, LEA is preceded by the Shared Book Approach where the teacher and students, together, share the reading of a Big Book with large text (Bainbridge and Malicky, 2004, pp. 95-98). This combination of teaching in a cycle from a Big Book during SBA, followed by shared class writing in LEA is referred to as MLEA or the Modified Language Experience Approach within the Singapore Primary classroom context.
   Shila continues to story her practice of working with children in Primary 1 and 2 by describing some of the projects she created to offer her students personal experiences that could move them through MLEA:

   Normally, in a week we have SBA for a few days followed by MLEA. There is a five-day cycle sometimes, but 2 weeks normally. After that we change to another theme.
   One such MLEA cycle I created for the children in my classroom focused on a unit about traditional costumes. I would get a few of them to role play, to wear their traditional costumes. I remember the students had to walk in their traditional costumes and then we would discuss about what they wore. After that we followed up with MLEA. 
   MLEA is the Language Experience Approach, right?  I gave them an experience like their traditional walk, their role play, modelling and from there they described their clothing, what a child wore. That would be one day but not the whole day, of course, just about one hour. Then I would get them to sit down on the floor and we would discuss about how the costume looked and I would get them to contribute some phrases or even if they can contribute sentences, I would write them down on the white paper and make sure I wrote in proper sentences, proper English.  Then, after doing the whole MLEA experience, I would get them to go into their groups and they would write about their favourite costume together also.
   Some students, they come from literary backgrounds, so they can speak, they can contribute words on their own but some we really need to guide to pick words from the book. So the children will remember the words we have created together, they each have a word bank book.  At times, I would also paste some simple verbs on the wall, just one column, and then in another column there will be just the adverbs so when they write, I could point to them and say, ‘These are words you can use’.

Shila brings the personal experiences of the children to bear upon her teaching of English language in the classroom through valid and meaningful written experience as well as vocabulary that comes directly out of the students’ own knowledge base.

The Writing Process in the Singapore Primary Classroom – Shila’s Wonders
Of the six strands of language (Bainbridge and Malicky, 2004, p. 11), according to Shila, writing is the strand where Singaporean students appear to be weakest. She reflects upon this problem: “They can speak and they can read but they can’t write well…We don’t have time for that.” Shila indicates that the children write “a proper composition” only once a “fortnight” and complete the full writing and publishing process (Graves in Bainbridge and Malicky, 2004) only once a term “because process writing takes a lot of time…but actually it works a lot.”  She suggests that this is a problem that needs to be addressed:

   You know, they are reading the literature, I get them to read these novels and everything, and it really improves in their content writing. There is a marked improvement and it’s commented on by other teachers who mark my compositions, but the grammar part, that’s where their weakness lies. They can speak, they can read, but when they write, there will be loopholes. The contents is there because they have been reading a lot, right; the storyline is very interesting but the way they construct their sentences is not.
   The problem is that in a common classroom, each day we have at most 4 periods of English or 2 hours. The higher the level we are, in P4 or 5, the lesser periods we have for language – only 2 to 3 periods per day which is one and a half hours – not enough.  Even if you have 2 hours per day, it’s not enough to do a first draft to guide them. Then to do a 2nd draft for that particular day is really not enough. We have other things to cover like worksheets because we must have some tangible things - evidence to show that there is some work done.
   There is one strategy that I did try for this process writing. I would give them a three picture story; the last picture will be a question mark, right. And I would have them find the conclusion of the story. So for the first picture – introduction - the students sit in fours. Myself and yourself and the other two, we would be working together writing our own introduction. Then the second picture, we would write ourselves and then after everything was done, we would put them all together and choose the best as a group. The students are required to choose the best phrases and the best story outline and then create one story together as a group based on what each contributed. They really liked that. The result were very good, in fact much better than if the children were to work individually on their own stories.
   Another strategy I tried in P3 and 4 was I’d get them to bring their fiction story books and then they would have a personalized notebook. Then I would get them to record any sentences or statements that have very strong vocabulary words or those that introduce a story or any paragraph that they liked best. They would copy them down into their notebook so they’ll have a kind of dictionary of their favourite statements or sentences. Then I would encourage them to make use of these words in their stories. Some will have difficulty but the more aware ones, right, they will take these few sentences from their own dictionary and use them in their writing.
   Still another activity I did with my students was to have them make greeting cards.  This activity did not take a lot of time but it was enjoyable. Here is one of the cards made for me by a P2 students for Teacher’s Day, 1995:

“Teacher’s Day are special but the day only one day around the years. This will bring you happy day with you this year.  I thanks you for teaching me this two years. This day will bring you more wishes with you. Your heart was so kind and I wish you and your children happy every day.  I Shi-Hui wish you a happy teacher’s Day!” (Sept 1, 1995)

   Isn’t that wonderful? Here’s another card from Hamzah. He writes: “The thing you show to me really care. Thank you for being my teacher.” And one from Pei Rou who says “We are having fun. I love you.” This last card is from Yin Lin; I love this card!

“Here’s wishing you a happy teacher’s day on the 1st of Sep.  I guess you must have had a great time on this day celebrating with children once again. Happy Teacher’s Day and Best Wishes! Here I took the opportunity to wish you a Happy Teacher’s Day with lots of Good Wishes. Though we have known each other for only a few months, I find that you are fun.  Its nice knowing you. Last but not least, may your dreams come true!”
(Sept 1, 1995)

   It is amazing to see this considering where these children have come from!

My Wonders about Shila’s Story and Possibilities for the Future
“Narrative inquiries are always composed around a particular wonder, a research puzzle” (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000, p. 124). My research puzzle in this article focuses upon the phenomenon of ‘teaching practice within the Singapore primary classroom context.’  Shila’s story leaves me with many ‘wonders’ to contemplate.
   My first series of questions within my research puzzle has to do with the colloquial terminology of ‘neighbourhood school’ used by Shila to separate the government schools by socio-economics. Is this terminology widely used by Singaporean teachers? Is the funding for the ‘elite’ versus neighbourhood schools’ different? Do teachers apply to transfer to ‘elite’ schools because they believe the quality of students will be better in the higher socio-economic government schools? What is the ratio of ESL students to first language English speakers in the ‘elite’ school by comparison to the ‘neighbourhood’ schools? This whole notion of school casting in Singapore is fascinating and worth pursuing.
   A second series has to do with the apparent tight control by the Singapore Ministry of Education of teaching strategies to be used by the teachers. I have to wonder how extensively the official ‘story of Singapore schooling’ differs from that told by Shila. I also have to wonder if teachers who demonstrate unique teaching strategies are rewarded within the Singapore teaching evaluation system.
   Finally, I am left to consider the concept of first language English in a country where, “ It is so unlikely that even 10% of the children have any background in English” in a government school like the one where Shila is teaching.  What does it mean to be an English speaking country with an official first language of English where so many children come from homes where their mother tongue is something other than English.  I wonder how the quality of English is affected by the political positioning of English as a first language versus English as a Second Language for Singapore students.

Crossing Borders of Understanding
Clandinin (2007) suggests that “Borders are abstractions. They exist as clear demarcations of territory only on maps but do not show up so clearly in the real world”  (p. 58). The borders Shila and I have crossed while telling our stories of practice to one another during the development of her stories are: a.) physical - place to place, b.) temporal - forwards and backwards in time within our own, and across each other’s story, and c.) internal and external to our own stories - struggles within and outside of ourselves with our own and other’s beliefs, our own and other’s cultures and our own and other’s communities. I resonate with Clandinin’s description of a narrative borderland (2007, p. 59) noted below:

The idea of a borderland is helpful for understanding the tensions that exist for those of us who work within the broad plotlines of narrative inquiry. Narrative inquirers frequently find themselves crossing cultural discourses, ideologies, and institutional boundaries.  In this work, they often encounter both deep similarities and profound differences between their own experiences and those with whom they work, neither of which can be reduced to the other.”

   Sometimes it feels as though I have traveled a very long way from the Canadian Primary classroom where I had my ‘narrative beginnings’ as a teacher, crossing so many border in order to come to this place in my life.  Then I have the opportunity to work with a colleague like Shila who shares her story of living and working with children in a Singapore Primary English classroom with me, and I realize that I never really left the classroom. As I travel back to the in-classroom place where Shila and her students live, love and learn together, making sense of the curriculum that surrounds them, I begin to understand that even though I am in a different place, space and time, as Singaporeans would say, my experience revisiting and restorying teaching in the Primary classroom with Shila leaves me with a feeling of “same, same…but different!”

References
Abdullah, M. and Jacobs, G. (March 2004). Promoting Cooperative Learning at Primary School. TESL-EJ, 7(4) 1.  Retrieved Aug 6, 2008 from
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej28/a1.html

Bainbridge, J., & Malicky, G. (2004). Constructing meaning: Balancing elementary language arts (3rd ed.). Toronto, ON, Canada: Nelson.

Best Practice Briefs(Feb 2004, pp. 2-3). Effective teachers: Characteristics of teachers.           Retrieved Dec 18, 2007 from http://outreach.msu.edu/bpbriefs/archive.asp

Clandinin, J. (1995). Stories of possibilities. Early Childhood Education. 28(2), 4-8.

Clandinin, J. (1995). Still learning to teach. In T. Russell. & F. Korthangen (Eds.),Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 25-35). Washington, DC: Falmer Press.

Clandinin, J. (2007). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage Publications.

Clandinin, J. & Connelly, M (1994). Personal experience methods. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.). Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 423-427). Thousand Islands, CA: Sage.

Clandinin, J & Connelly, M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Clandinin, J., Pushor, D., and Orr, A. (Jan/Feb 2007).
Navigating sites for narrative  inquiry. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 21-35

Clark, G.(1998). Writing as travel or rhetoric on the road. College Composition andCommunication. 49(1), 9-23.

Connelly, M. & Clandinin, J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry.Educational Researcher, 19(4), 2-13.

Connelly, M. & Clandinin, J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J.L. Green, G. Camilli, &      P. Elsmore (Eds). Handbook of complimentary methods in education research (3rd ed.), (pp. 477-487). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Crites, S. (1971). The narrative quality of experience. Journal of the American Academy  of Religion, 39(3), 292-3 11.

Currie, L. (1997), Why use a novel? Literacy, 31(1), 11–16.
Grumet, M.(1988). Bitter milk: Women and teaching. Amherst, MA:University of Massachusetts Press.

Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, world-travelling and loving perception. Hypatia. 2(2), 3-19.

National Reading Panel Update. (Jan 2001). Reading: Knowing what works. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Ochs, E. and Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pinnell, G. S. & Fountas, I. C. (2002). Leveled books for readers Grades 3-6: A Companion volume to guiding readers and writers. Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Ricky, M. (2002). Guided reading in the balanced reading program. Retrieved on May  12, 2008 at http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/rickey.htm

STELLAR (2006, 2007). Strategies for EL learning and reading – General Guidelines.    Singapore: Curriculum Planning & Development Division, Ministry of Education

Tileston, D. (2005). 10 Best teaching practices: How brain research, learning styles, and standards define teaching competencies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tompkins, G., (2005). Language arts: Patterns of practice. (6th ed.). Columbus, OH:   Pearson: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological   processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Witherell C. & Noddings, N. (1991). Stories lives tell: Narrative and dialogue in   education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.