We Care About Your Privacy
By clicking “Accept all”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy.
How can you take your EAL department forward to play a part in a whole school development strategy? Over the years, I have found that this can be a real challenge. A plan for a whole-school approach to EAL can have a significant impact, and not only benefits the EAL learners, but the whole school population.
Blair and Bourne (1998) researched some successful schools and identified some common themes with regard to EAL:
Schools all have different organisational structures, which means that roles and responsibilities can fall onto a variety of different people. It is important to remember that the task of EAL development does not rest on the shoulders of one person alone. Provision for EAL learners is larger than one person’s role. Therefore, your development plan needs to be owned and shared by the staff and leadership team. It needs to instigate a change in culture.
Kotter (1996) argues that there are ‘8 Steps to change’ that can be followed to make progress. These fall into the following three areas:
1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Build a guiding coalition
3. Form a strategic vision
4. Enlist a volunteer group
5. Enable action by removing barriers
6. Plan for short-term wins
7. Sustain acceleration
8. Institute change
Scott (2012) discusses how to set whole-school targets by first considering which things you want to change, review or add. By creating a list of things that need to be taken into account, you are able to identify your main priorities and list them as SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed). These targets can be numbered in priority order, for example, from 1-3, with one being the first priority and three being the lowest priority (Scott, 2012). The final stage is to consider how these targets will be achieved, deciding what needs to be done and who is going to be responsible for this (Scott, 2012).
Finally, it is extremely important that everyone is on board with the changes and that there is a shared understanding of the plan for all stakeholders.
If you want to learn more about how change can be implemented in your school or to access a structure for whole school development, join the Across Cultures EAL Framework for Schools course. More details can be found here.
References:
Blair, M. and Bourne, J. (1998) Making the difference: teaching and learning in successful multi-ethnic schools, DfEE
Kotter, J. (1996) Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press
Morrison McGill, R (2015), Teacher Toolkit: Helping you survive your first five years, London, Bloomsbury Education
Scott, C (2012), Teaching English as an Additional Language, 5-11: A Whole School Resource File, London, Routledge
While it can be argued that EAL learners have an entitlement to experience a full and varied curriculum through complete class immersion and no withdrawal, some would argue that learners benefit from being withdrawn for time limited support to help them develop their English language in order to assist them in accessing the curriculum (NALDIC, FAQ Podcast, 2017).
If learners are unable to access the lesson content, they can feel frustrated and a sense of failure. Learners need to feel confident and successful.
In Science, EAL learners need to understand scientific language, both written and oral, as well as to work with the command verbs such as; discuss, explain, evaluate etc… (Mertin, 2014). This means the language required for Science is academic and challenging and, as a result, it can become extremely difficult for learners to access the subject content. This begs the questions; How do we make the lessons comprehensible to EAL learners and provide what Krashen (1998) terms as ‘comprehensible input’?
Brewster, Ellis and Girard (2012) discuss the idea of playing Bingo or Dominoes as games for connecting various curriculum areas. Brewster (2012) explains that playing games like these can be a support for learning target vocabulary, for example, playing a Dominoes game before or after reading where learners can either match the words or the pictures together as they listen is an excellent way to learn the target language. You may be studying the human skeleton vocabulary in the game and making connections to the class book e.g.