EAL IN THE CLASSROOM: TIPS AND STRATEGIES TO HELP

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES THAT FACE EAL CHILDREN?

• The biggest challenge is that children are nervous and don’t have confidence to speak English
• Parents of EAL children often don’t speak English very well themselves, making it challenging to help with school work and overall language development.
• Keeping the children engaged and challenged is very important as EAL children often get bored in class because they don’t always understand everything that is going on around them.
• Continuing the growth and development of their mother tongue alongside developing their English can be challenging and is often not prioritized, however it is crucial to their overall development and will help their English in the long run.

HOW CAN I HELP EAL PUPILS IN CLASS?

• One of the first and most important things that we need to do is to make learning English fun. It is very challenging for children, especially in the beginning, so the more positive praise and encouragement we give, the more they will be interested in learning. We can do this by learning through games, songs, play acting and using lots of actions to go along with our speech.
• Encourage children to try independently before asking for help. It is very important to empower children and help them feel like they can indeed do it by themselves.
• Don’t force it. Learning should be fun and it is important that we don’t put too much pressure on EAL children. Every child progresses differently and we need to recognise that there is no set timeline for when they will start to speak English more fluently.
• Practice, practice, practice! The more they speak, listens, read and write in English the more confident they will become and the better their English will get.

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BUDDY SYSTEMS FOR IN CLASS AND OTHER AREAS OF THE SCHOOL

• Pairing up a new pupil with different buddies throughout the day will help them make more friends, feel more confident and takes the pressure off only one child to be responsible for the new pupil.
• In class partner: Ideally a pupil who speaks their native language and can help translate for the new pupil.
• Play time partner: A different pupil can be responsible for keeping the new pupil company during playtimes.
• Lunch partner: Another pupil can be responsible for sitting next to them in lunch and helping them to assimilate to the lunch time routine.
• Specialist lesson partner: For PE, Art and ICT.

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ALLOW THEM TO USE THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE OR ANY OTHER LANGUAGES THEY KNOW, WHATEVER NECESSARY TO HELP THEM FEEL CONFIDENT AND COMFORTABLE IN CLASS.�

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• Most of our pupils are EAL and don’t speak English as their first language.
• The old philosophy was to submerse them in English and not allow them to use their mother tongue to translate. This old way is no longer found to be effective and can actually discourage pupils from wanting to improve their English as it can feel forced and no respect is given to their language.
• Speaking more than one language is now referred to as plurilingualism or multilingualism and using more than one language to learn is referred to as translanguaging.. It is encouraged to use as many languages as you know to help you learn a new language. For example, if I am learning a new vocabulary word and I already know that word in two other languages, I use that knowledge to help me remember the new word.

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MORE CLASSROOM STRATEGIES TO HELP

• Provide opportunities for talk and kinaestethetic (tactile) learning in all lessons for the first few years.
• Place them next to a supportive pupil who speaks the same language if possible.
• Provide clear instructions and visual support aids for all tasks.
• Label diagrams and pictures, matching words and definitions.
• Focus on writing simple sentences.
• Ask prediction questions about texts before reading.
• Use talk partners for oral rehearsal before writing.
• Provide dictionaires and online translation tools.
• Encourage paired reading with a focus on extracting information from texts, ie DARTs.
• Model target language orally especially in preparation for writing.
• Focus on using grammar in context, ie: past tenses in history, comparative phrases in maths and science.
• Use substitution tables to help with written structures.