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Academia Británica Cuscatleca (ABC) in El Salvador joined the Learning Village in April 2015. However, they weren't fully active across Upper Primary until Communication Across Cultures came to their school in February this year to give an inset on EAL.
Since then, they have used the Learning Village to support learners with accessing some of the basics of English as well as the curriculum content needed to help them to be successful in their lessons.
Although we can't put names to these results, you can see a snapshot of the top learner's progress over the last 30 days, here:

The Head of Village and EAL Coordinator at ABC, Jonathan Marquez, works in small groups with his learners to pre-teach and gap fill the necessary English language required for learners based on what is currently happening or about to happen in the curriculum and the weekly learner progress report he receives from the Learning village.
ABC is fast approaching the top scores on the Learning Village leaderboard!
Thanks for sharing these photos ABC and keep up the good work!

With thanks to Academia Británica Cuscatleca the children and their parents for providing permission to publish these photos.
In previous articles we discussed the need for learners to obtain Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). These skills need to be the initial focus of learning alongside curriculum content in the early days. Class teachers are required to make significant adjustments to their programme of learning which is not an easy task, especially for those teachers who are new to teaching foreign languages.
Pre-teaching helps learners to enter a lesson feeling confident, independent and ready to shine! It can be used to promote curiosity before a lesson, expose learners to new, unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts and/or allow them to tackle tasks at their own pace before working in a larger group setting.
An EAL learner may be confident interacting with teachers and peers using everyday English, but the mathematics curriculum employs abstract academic vocabulary and, to access this, they need to be taught in a specific, intentional way. In addition, EAL students may already be highly proficient in mathematics and the English vocabulary in their maths problems may be a hurdle that can cause confusion, adding to their cognitive load and knocking their confidence. Consequently, there is a lot for an EAL teacher to consider.