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Being able to understand and use a range of adjectives can help learners to communicate successfully. Adjectives are essential for adding information or interest to their spoken or written language. They also enable learners to differentiate between items.
Tip or Idea: Play ‘I spy…’ but with an adjective twist! Select an item in the classroom and choose an adjective to describe it E.g. “I spy with my little eye something fluffy!” Learners take it in turns to see if they can guess the item. If they need more support, you can add an additional adjective “I spy with my little eye something fluffy and blue”. For more confident learners try a less common adjective to challenge them.
Free resource to help you with this activity: Use our Adjective Flashcards to support learners to be the leader and choose their own item for an ‘I spy’ game.
Learners having difficulty with receptive language or following directions may need support with learning propositions.
Tip or Idea: Ask your learner to draw or make an imaginary scene by following instructions e.g. Draw a house at the bottom of your page/Draw a sunshine above the house/Draw a tree next to the house. Extend this further: Can your learner tell you what to draw? Can they make a crazy or funny picture? Can they make a scene with physical objects?
Learners are often faced with the challenge of carrying out research for their class project work, and often schools invest heavily into non-fiction readers which can be used for such projects. Non-fiction books are a vehicle for learning all sorts of information about life and the way the world works. These books are also invaluable for helping EAL learners to develop a range of literacy skills, which in contrast to fiction books, require a different type of literacy skill because they use a narrative tone (Lines, 2009).
As a child progresses through education, the development of strong connections between their parents and teachers is vitally important (Drake, 2000). Effective home-school partnerships and parental involvement in children’s education have traditionally been a strong predictor of student academic achievement and - ultimately - success (Epstein, 2001). Therefore, understanding the powerful role of parents and the ways in which they can be an effective influence on their children is crucial in our effort to provide a truly supportive learning environment for students.