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It is Friday morning; the Head teacher comes to tell you that on Monday morning you will have a new student arriving who does not speak much English. How can you give a successful welcome for that student given the time frame?
It almost goes without saying that the more information and communication that a class teacher is given prior to a new student arriving in school, the more successful the start. To have a whole school plan in place for new arrivals, especially for students who do not speak English, is gold dust. Chapter 3 in ‘Teaching English as an Additional Language 5-11: A Whole School Resource’ by Caroline Scott sets out a framework for a school to set up such a plan and will be referenced in this article. In my experience, the more prepared a school is and the more information that is shared, the smoother the transition for a new arrival into the school.
However, a good induction programme takes time to prepare, in the meanwhile, what are the practical things a teacher can do, with limited time, to prepare for a successful welcome?
Preparing the Classroom
Preparing the Class Students
First game - Empathy Card Game
Empathy cards have been designed with purpose of building a bridge between the known and the unknown and encouraging students to empathise with the experience of a new arrival in the class.
There are 10 cards. The cards with a yellow heading are designed to encourage students to make connections between their own experiences and that of the new arrival. The cards with an orange heading are designed to encourage the students to start to think of practical ways to help a new arrival settle in, linked to their own experiences. The Empathy Game can be played independently or in conjunction with the game ‘Changing Shoes’.
Preparing the School
Broadcast to the staff that there is a new student who does not speak English arriving and share his/her name, language, class they are in and who their break buddy and adult mentor are. Remember to broadcast this information beyond class teachers to include break and lunchtime staff, specialist teachers and TA’s.
This is a good start to preparing for a new arrival.
About the Author
Jessica Tweedie has experience of working as a manager and setting up systems that work for the EAL learner and has ensured that she continues to be a practicing EAL teacher. She actively explores new ideas and methods to enable students to access the curriculum - in both pull out and push-in lessons and always working in partnership with mainstream colleagues.
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.
We are all faced with very different learning situations at the moment and home learning has become the current norm. The challenges it poses are significant. Parents often have limited time available to support learners, limited understanding of where to start, sometimes a lack of technological know-how in accessing online classrooms - or even a lack of access to an online environment altogether. These issues are exacerbated amongst parents with limited understanding of the school language.
You're the EAL lead in your school - or a teacher with responsibility for EAL. You're a class teacher who's been asked to look into EAL - or a teaching assistant who runs a special EAL group. But do your colleagues really know what you do? Do they know what EAL is - and why it matters for all staff in a school, and not just you?