11 fantastic resources to promote elements of international mindedness...
Culture shock for new EAL students is more or less extreme depending on the extent of the difference between their old culture and new culture. During the period of transition, creating bridges is crucial to help students identify similarities and differences between their home culture and the new one as well as making them aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each culture. Stagg (2013) states, "there is every reason to place renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education, enabling each individual to grasp the individuality of other people."
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promotes the universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, this means the recognition and appreciation of others, the ability to live together and to listen to others (presented in this link in child friendly format). As Stagg comments, "They focus on embracing and celebrating diversity, they leave a lasting impression and encourage shared understanding and enjoyment of different cultures within the school and around the world." They also engender community spirit and can create an interest in students transitioning between different cultures.
Every subject can be used to embrace international perspectives. Literature provides a great means of understanding a culture. The school library should embrace cultures from around the world, have books in different languages and special boxes of books for students in transition.
Some great resources for developing open-mindedness about different cultures:
By including different cultures, faiths and nationalities, one would hope that feelings of potential alienation would diminish, providing one aspect of creating a more unified but diverse society. To quote my daughter's headteacher at a school assembly, "although there are problems in some parts of the world, in this school we all get along - it doesn't matter where you are from, what colour or what religion you are".
The EAL teacher has a key role to play in developing this ideal in supporting the class teachers, and using their privilege of having the smaller groups to identify each EAL child's individual need for support, not only for language, but by showing an interest in their home culture and promoting their positive integration in the new country and school. This helps avoid feelings of isolation.
The importance of understanding each individual EAL student's transition should not be underestimated.
References:
García, O. and Kleifgen, J. (2010). Educating emergent bilinguals. New York: Teachers College Press.
Stagg, L. (2013). International Mindedness. Rochester: Urbane Publications Limited.
The Sentence Analyser was piloted by the children and staff in the EAL Hub at Lea Forest Academy in the autumn term of 2018. Over the following two terms, the children and staff used it in a variety of ways to support a widening of the children's vocabulary. The EAL Hub children's morphology skills were tracked, alongside a control group.
What did the data show? What did the staff think? Was the resource beneficial enough to become embedded? Let's find out!
In Science, EAL learners need to understand scientific language, both written and oral, as well as to work with the command verbs such as; discuss, explain, evaluate etc… (Mertin, 2014). This means the language required for Science is academic and challenging and, as a result, it can become extremely difficult for learners to access the subject content. This begs the questions; How do we make the lessons comprehensible to EAL learners and provide what Krashen (1998) terms as ‘comprehensible input’?
Barry and Matthew Carpenter’s ‘Recovery Curriculum’ has many applications for EAL pupils. Their ‘Recovery Curriculum’ was created during the 2021-21 pandemic, over concerns about how learners would cope when back in school. The Carpenters describe how the Recovery Curriculum is built on five levers, “as a systematic, relationships-based approach to reigniting the flame of learning in each child” (Carpenter and Carpenter, 2020).
