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If you have EAL new arrivals in your school with limited English, you need a scheme of work in English that supports learners with language learning alongside the curriculum content you are delivering. This is to ensure young learners are understanding the basics of language needed for success.
Learning can be split into two parts:
The downloadable scheme of work for providing learners with the survival language they need for later success with academic language. They are split into sessions. Often, it takes a huge amount of time to prepare resources to support learners with the survival language alongside the academic language they need to access the demands of the curriculum.
Transitioning successfully between extended home and school learning has been the struggle of every affected school, across the globe, since the onset of the pandemic. None of us could have predicted what was about to happen back in January of 2020 and we still struggle to comprehend the enormous scale of the struggle.
School closures, however your school has approached these, have had a huge impact on learner engagement. Even the most prepared schools have struggled to engage learners to the same extent as when learning in the classroom.
As school teachers faced with EAL learners in our classrooms, we often push the teaching of phonics down the list, especially at secondary school level. Yet communication is dependent on comprehensive pronunciation when speaking, and on decoding graphemes when reading. Consider for a moment the impact mispronunciation can have on accurate communication. For example, if I ask for soap in a restaurant, I might be faced with a blank stare! This error is caused by confusing two very similar phonemes in soap/soup.
In cases where you have an absolute beginner to English, an induction-to-English is supportive. Yes, we need to be differentiating for the curriculum content in class too, but let's help our learners with some of the basics in a regular small group or one-to-one supportive English learning session...