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Colourful hands symbolising neurodiversity
Download Autism guide
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Author: Karen Wilson, SEND Specialist

Learners, with or without EAL, may have special educational needs. These needs often require a range of carefully selected strategies and approaches to help learners reach their full potential.

Tip or Idea: Take time to observe your learners, to help distinguish between needs arising from English as an Additional Language (EAL) and those stemming from specific educational needs (SEND). Careful and systematic observation helps teachers to make informed decisions to support learners effectively. This guidance from the Bell Foundation provides a helpful framework.

Learning Village resource: Our range of SEND guides include useful information about different learner needs, as well as adjustments you can make both in the Learning Village and to your teaching practice to support them. Take a look at our summarised Autism guide. Members can access the full set of comprehensive guides here.

Download Autism guide
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Further learning - Blog

SEND learner describing with adjectives

SEND support: Adjectives - Describing words

Created: Tue 13th Aug 2024

Being able to understand and use a range of adjectives can help learners to communicate successfully. Adjectives are essential for adding information or interest to their spoken or written language. They also enable learners to differentiate between items.

'thank you' in different languages

Translanguaging in teaching

Created: Mon 10th Feb 2025

Attending a recent woodwind ensemble concert made me think about language use in the classroom - quite an unusual connection, right? ‘How so?’ you might ask. Perhaps it was because the musicians each had a different heritage, played a different instrument, and spoke another language. Yet, they all tuned their instruments together at the start and communicated in English before creating something beautifully fluid for the audience to immerse themselves in.

Teacher talking about bullying

EAL learners: Combating bullying

Created: Tue 15th Nov 2022

When I was teaching early literacy to adults some years ago, I had two teenage students from a refugee background join one of my classes. They were beginner-level English as an Additional language (EAL) learners and both were non-literate. They had been expelled from the local high school for fighting. At the time, there was a national fundraising campaign to support children in troubled parts of the world.

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