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If you have EAL new arrivals in your school with limited English, you need a scheme of work in English that supports learners with language learning alongside the curriculum content you are delivering. This is to ensure young learners are understanding the basics of language needed for success.
Learning can be split into two parts:
The downloadable scheme of work for providing learners with the survival language they need for later success with academic language. They are split into sessions. Often, it takes a huge amount of time to prepare resources to support learners with the survival language alongside the academic language they need to access the demands of the curriculum.
The popularity of bilingual schools is increasing. This can be seen, for example, in the growing number of French schools in London, where the students follow a bilingual programme.
In many countries there is an emphasis on learning two languages (The Linguist, 2017). In Scotland in 2011 the government pledged to follow the European model of 1+2 languages. Every child would learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue, to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and thus facilitate the inclusion of other languages within the school.
You may be able to recall a lesson where learners were fully engaged and motivated. These teaching experiences are deeply rewarding for educators and essentially one of the reasons why we enjoy our jobs as teachers. However, realistically, teachers often face the reality of being unable to reach some students until they present lesson input slightly differently.
What tools are there if you have a sixth sense that something is not quite right?
At what point does a teacher start to question whether an EAL student’s lack of progress is due to English Language Development (ELD) issues or due to specific learning differences (SpLD).
These questions come up again and again. Learning English as an Additional Language is not a learning difficulty, however 20% of EAL students will follow the norm of having specific learning differences (Chapter 1, SFR24/2012, GovUK). Therefore, there is a possibility that an EAL student has SpLDs.