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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.
Preparing for exams, tests, or assessments can be a stressful experience, especially for those learning in a second language. Exams and assessments often require strong language skills, such as essay writing, comprehensible answers showing the understanding of main points and details, or at the very least multiple choice questions that test a learner’s ability to pick out detailed information.
How can you take your EAL department forward to play a part in a whole school development strategy? Over the years, I have found that this can be a real challenge. A plan for a whole-school approach to EAL can have a significant impact, and not only benefits the EAL learners, but the whole school population.
Blair and Bourne (1998) researched some successful schools and identified some common themes with regard to EAL:
Play is a crucial part of language development and ideas for play and games are an essential part of any teacher’s toolkit. One of the most informal and obvious contexts for language development takes place in the playground for any child (Pinter, 2006). Children will often pick up every day language from their peers and this can be an essential part of their learning. Pinter (2006) explains that when a child moves to a new country, after the initial silent phase, children will then start to pick up phrases, conversation language and so-called playground language fairly fast.