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Getting behaviour 'right' is crucially important for all schools. Ensuring that we have a 'fit for purpose' behaviour policy that caters for all pupils throughout their schooling - including EAL pupils - is vital for the feel and culture of our schools, as well as for allowing pupils to feel safe and be in the right environment to learn to their full potential.
As we all know - and as a quick Google search will tell us - different countries have different expectations for their pupils. Expectations that may differ from country to country (to name just a few) include elements such as:
For example, when showing that they are listening to a teacher in a class conversation, some pupils may have been taught to cross their arms, while other pupils may look down as a sign of respect, and others may have been trained to track the teacher to demonstrate active listening.
When we are designing and realising our behaviour policies, it is important to be mindful of our EAL pupils. With pupils joining us from an array of different backgrounds and cultures, with different expectations and experiences of norms of acceptable behaviour in schools and towards teachers, how do we create a fair and enforceable behaviour policy? And how do we unpack this policy for our pupils, so that they can be fully functioning and happy participants in class and in the school community as a whole?
With all the minutiae and variants of responses and behaviours that pupils can show and experience, it is not surprising that arriving at a school can be overwhelming and confusing for new pupils. That is why it is vitally important that we spend time unpacking behaviour policies, empathising with pupils and pre-empting things that may go wrong, as well as modelling and emphasising those behaviours that we do want to see.
Here are a few ideas of some practical actions that we can take to support our EAL pupils when thinking about acceptable behaviour:
You can download a template for a behaviour chart with space for translation by clicking on the buttons at the top or bottom of this article.
These are just some of the many ways that we can unpack our behaviour policies for our EAL pupils, and scaffold positive behaviour in school. Using images and translation, we can make our expectations clear, and help new arrivals navigate the often confusing school environment, to reach their full learning potential.
References:
Cowley, S. (2001). Getting the buggers to behave. London, Continuum
Scott, C. (2020). An English as an Additional Language Programme: Learning through images for 7-14-year-olds. Abingdon: Routledge
Scott, C. (2012). Teaching English as an Additional Language 5-11: A Whole School Resource. Abingdon: Routledge
Worth, D. (2021). ‘Creating behaviour policies in multicultural settings’, TES, Viewed 20th November, 2021, access here
Everyone is talking about differentiation for EAL in whole class teaching, but how do we actually approach it consistently and effectively?
At Across Cultures we have been developing some systematic ways of approaching this in a structured, yet flexible format. In the downloadable plan you'll see a framework to support EAL teachers with planning for content learning alongside language learning. The plan is based about the theme of sea pollution and provides a writing frame for a persuasive text.
This lesson follow a particular format:
If you have the opportunity to use a bilingual support partner to help families who have learners working from home, it may be useful to prepare a list of questions for this staff member to ask. Bilingual support is extremely useful when making contact with parents who speak little or no English.
Many of us have been in a situation where we want to communicate with someone who does not speak the same language. We resort to wild gestures, attempts to say unfamiliar words, grammar seems insignificant and feelings of frustration soar. Some basic vocabulary becomes our lifeline.