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We all learn in different ways. Helping your students to identify what works best for them is really important. Do they prefer visual aids, make links with existing learning or use movement and actions to help them remember things? Identifying their own personal preferences and effective practices will benefit lifelong learning and help your students to succeed.
Tip or Idea: Talk to your learners about different ways of learning. Discuss how you like to learn as an adult and encourage them to reflect on their own learning, what they enjoy and what they think helps them most. You might even like to demonstrate different approaches to a simple learning task and see how they respond.
Free resource to help you with this activity: Explore our Learning to Learn resource. Our Doing the Learning flashcards can help to scaffold conversations about different learning strategies. The Planning to Learn resources can be used as prompts and reminders for successful learning approaches in class.
Effective assessment for learning (AfL) is ‘informed feedback to pupils about their work’ (Shaw, 1998). As Broadfoot et al (1999) discuss, there are five key ways in which we can enhance learning by assessment. These steps can be universally applied to all learning and all learners, and thus address the learning needs of EAL learners in physical and virtual classrooms. They are:
English is a language which has developed over 15 hundred years and has adopted words from over 350 languages. As a result, English has a rich tapestry of vocabulary and spelling patterns which can confuse learners. Having a brief background knowledge of the historical influences on the English language can support our teaching to both first language learners and EAL learners, especially around decoding words when reading.
Truly inclusive practice extends beyond adapting materials or managing the classroom so that everybody can access the course content. It is about building a classroom culture where everybody genuinely respects and supports each other, and embraces the diversity inherent in our communities. This is more easily achieved if the members of the group understand themselves well, and what makes them different from each other.