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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.
This morning my 4-year-old said, "Mummy, there are two languages, child's language and adult language". I asked her what she meant and she explained that when her friend was crying the teacher told her to read her the "owl" book. She then said, "The teacher reads the words but the child changes it." A young child may not be able to read, or retell the story using the actual words but often can retell it in their own words. A bit like a translation, as my daughter illustrated. The key factor is not the actual words, but the story behind the words.
While learning new languages, a lot of information simply needs to be remembered, and we often have to combine new information with what we already know, using our working memory. For students with specific learning differences, such as dyslexia, retrieving information from the long-term memory can be slower or less effective, resulting in greater difficulties in learning. It is therefore vital to teach specific memory strategies.
Memory processes are complex, but in my experience, we remember better the things that we:
Sometimes our students who have English as an additional language seem to be having more difficulty than expected developing their language, and accessing the rest of the curriculum. Most teachers have become more aware of the signs of dyslexia (and other specific learning differences), but the overlap with the language learning process makes it much more complex to identify EAL learners who also have a SpLD.