Generic and Subject Specific Resources
It is useful to have both generic and more subject-specific resources, to enable effective support for pupils with EAL.
This section of your site is designed to provide both, with ideas designed to help with planning and developing strategies and resources to support students to access the language and learning associated with classroom life generally and also the subject being taught.
Generic Resources
One of the key considerations when planning and teaching to ensure the best experience for pupils with EAL, is identifying and emphasising key language needed.
The concept of Language across the Curriculum (LAC) has been around for quite some time now and is so relevant to all that we do in the classroom to ensure inclusive practice.
The key idea of LAC is that language and subject content work hand in hand, so that pupils with EAL can develop their language and their understanding of key concepts - in all subject lessons.
The PowerPoint below provides more details about LAC and some ideas for implementing this in the classroom and across the whole school setting.
You may also want to read more about LAC and here is a link to a useful article:
Within the PowerPoint, you will have read about ‘graphic organisers’ which are so valuable for pupils with EAL; acting as scaffolds so that they can undertake the same work as their peers, with the use of visual aids.
The Bell Foundation has some more examples of graphic organisers here with very useful ideas for practice.
It is worth taking time to sign up to The Bell Foundation (free), as their website and webinars are excellent - underpinned by robust research, conducted by experts in the field.
The Bell Foundation ‘aims to improve policy, practice and systems to enable children, adults and communities in the UK that speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) to overcome disadvantage through language education’ and resources are always being added, including planning examples, worksheets and excellent assessment tools.
If you would like more ideas and a clear rationale for using graphic organisers, this short reading might be useful:
A very useful Report which you might want to dip into was produced in 2014 and funded by The Bell Foundation. It is entitled: ‘School approaches to the education of EAL students: language development, social integration and achievement’. You can access the report here:
Don’t be put off by the length of this document! It is worth taking a look at the Contents page and reading the sections which seem most useful to you.
There are some great quotes by teachers, EAL advisors, students etc. which give excellent insight into diverse experiences.
There might be sections of the report which would be worth sharing with colleagues in staff meetings or training days, to provoke discussion and consideration of different pedagogies and practices.
Something for all of us to consider, when planning for appropriate support for pupils with EAL, is how cognitively/linguistically demanding each aspect of our lesson will be.
Once we begin to focus on this, it becomes easier to pre-empt any challenges and provide suitable resources/scaffolds.
Jim Cummins (a Canadian researcher/writer, who focuses on supporting pupils with EAL) devised a quadrant to support with this:
The following very short video explains this quadrant and provides useful examples of activities that might fall into each quadrant.
Perhaps have a go at labelling activities in your lesson plans, in terms of whether they fall into quadrant 1, 2, 3 or 4.
This can help us to think about which parts of the lesson might be more difficult for pupils to access and plan in support for these elements.
Subject-specific resources
As well as generic resources, it is useful to have ideas that are specific to your subject in terms of providing the best possible support for pupils with EAL.
We have put together a Padlet - an interactive resource - where we have added resources for different secondary subjects.
This Padlet is a work in progress - we will add materials whenever we come across them!
If you find resources to upload, please do so - it can then be a dynamic resource for all.
You can access the Padlet here:
We hope these generic and subject specific resources are useful!
In the next section, we’ll examine culturally relevant and responsive teaching, which should enable you to think more about the ways we can use all these resources in the most effective ways.