Teacher guidance

22nd March 2023

Listen up! A ‘What’ and ‘Why’ EAL Checklist for Nurturing Great Listeners

Author: Eli Briasco, EAL Specialist Despite legitimate claims that EAL students devote over half of their time to listening when functioning in English (Nunan, 1998), this […]
28th February 2023

How to encourage EAL parents to become involved in their children’s education

Author: Linda Boland-Quigley, Home School Community Liaison Parental involvement in children’s education can take many forms and can be experienced differently by each parent. The benefits […]
24th January 2023

In Celebration of Mother Tongue

Author: Mary Langford, EAL Specialist (Mother Tongue & International Education) A growing number of international schools are demonstrating the importance and value of their students’ and teachers’ […]
9th December 2022

Tips for mainstream teachers to support English as an additional language (EAL) learners

Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist How often does a classroom teacher approach an EAL teacher with the words, “I don’t know how to help this learner! […]
7th November 2022

EAL Learners: Combating Bullying

Author: Christine Hanley, EAL Specialist When I was teaching early literacy to adults some years ago, I had two teenage students from a refugee background join […]
22nd September 2022

Written corrective feedback: Investigating beliefs and practices

Author: Eli Briasco, EAL Specialist Chances are, if you’ve been teaching English for a while, you’ve provided plenty of feedback to your learners on the accuracy […]
29th August 2022

Supporting students with basic literacy skills

Author: Breda Matthews, EAL Specialist Schools often have a number of students who are not yet literate in English. Whilst this includes English-speaking children who are […]
4th August 2022

Why use a graphic organiser?

We all know that there can be resistance to writing in the EAL classroom. To break this barrier, we need to consider the reasons for this, […]
4th August 2022

The importance of enjoying a good read

A wide reading programme is promoted as a key vehicle for learners of English as an additional language (EAL) in order for them to improve their […]
3rd August 2022

Steps for a Successful Transition for New Arrivals

It’s the beginning of a new academic year – you come in for your inset day, and find out that you have two new starters in […]
21st May 2022

Transitioning from Primary to Secondary

The big day has arrived, the new uniform is looking smart, and now our ‘senior’ Primary school learners are about to become important ‘junior’ Secondary school […]
27th April 2022

Early Career Framework and EAL

The Early Career Framework was made compulsory in the UK in September 2021. It replaces the year-long NQT period. It is a two-year programme of support […]
27th March 2022

Using language skills for mathematics

Author: Christine Hanley, EAL Specialist   Studying mathematics in an English-medium school presents learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL) with a double cognitive whammy as […]
23rd February 2022

Four ways to hook in your EAL learners at the start of a writing lesson

Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist   The traditional way to start a lesson with Secondary school learners is with a ‘do now!’ activity. It works. You get […]
23rd January 2022

The voices that don’t get heard: Why a child’s mother tongue matters in the classroom

Author: Yzanne Mackay   If Katerina spoke in Russian again in the classroom, the teacher warned her, her name would be put on the board and she […]
27th November 2021

Online safety for EAL learners

Author: Yzanne Mackay   Everyone recognises the importance of staying safe online – but it’s not always straightforward. For many of us, computing – including social media, […]
26th September 2021

A holistic approach to recovering lost learning

Author: Isabelle Bridger-Eames, EAL Specialist   Barry and Matthew Carpenter’s ‘Recovery Curriculum’ has many applications for EAL pupils. Their ‘Recovery Curriculum’ was created during the 2021-21 pandemic, […]
16th August 2021

What is EAL? – Talking to other teachers about EAL

Author: Yzanne Mackay   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 […]
10th July 2021

A sense of familiarity in unfamiliar times

Author: Louise Kearns, English Language Specialist Teacher   In March 2020 International Primary School Almere, along with all other schools here in the Netherlands, went into lockdown […]
5th June 2021

Memory strategies for language learners

Author: Dr Anne Margaret Smith   While learning new languages, a lot of information simply needs to be remembered, and we often have to combine new […]
17th May 2021

Teaching pronunciation in a whole language-based classroom

Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist   As school teachers faced with EAL learners in our classrooms, we often push the teaching of phonics down the list, especially […]
26th April 2021

Cloze procedures – Do your EAL pupils need ‘closure’?

Author: Isabelle Bridger-Eames, EAL Specialist   What is a cloze procedure? Cloze procedures are tasks where learners fill in the blanks in a text from which entire […]
17th March 2021

EdTech: the Emergency Service for Education in 2020!

Author: Yzanne Mackay   It’s now almost exactly a year since the UK education system went into lockdown. The ruling that schools must close to almost all […]
3rd March 2021

Keeping your EAL learners engaged while learning remotely

Author: Sarah Jones, EAL Coordinator, Lea Forest Academy   In January 2021, we commenced another lockdown in the UK and put our recovery curriculum on hold. […]
3rd February 2021

How fluent are your pupils in the language of ‘online English’?

Author: Catherine Brennan, Director, Better Bilingual CIC   To mute or to unmute? To reply to one or everyone? To use gallery or speaker view? Like […]
4th January 2021

Text types: Helping English language learners to achieve the same learning outcomes

Author: Breda Matthews, EAL Specialist   Teaching in a way that is responsive to the diversity in our classrooms has a huge impact on the learning […]
13th December 2020

Integrating language and curriculum teaching: a personal perspective

Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist   For those of us who are EAL teachers in school, selecting our language learning outcomes is only one consideration in […]
8th November 2020

Promoting effective student talk with dialogic teaching

Author: Eli Briasco, EAL Specialist   Think about the last lesson you taught to English language learners. I’m sure you did some form of planning beforehand. I […]
7th October 2020

An approach to EAL assessment

Author: Breda Matthews, EAL Specialist   Assessment in an EAL context takes many forms. It can be formal (e.g. tests and examinations), informal (e.g. teacher observations) […]
18th August 2020

EAL Learning – Achieving the right balance

Author: Isabelle Bridger, EAL Specialist   As educators, we are naturally reflective creatures, habitually revisiting lessons in our minds to see if we could somehow improve. […]
30th June 2020

Transitioning between home and school learning: some success stories

Author: Caroline Scott, author and director   Transitioning successfully between extended home and school learning has been the struggle of every affected school, across the globe, […]
4th June 2020

Assessment for learning: ‘Inside The Black Box’ for EAL learners

Author: Isabelle Bridger-Eames, EAL Specialist   Effective assessment for learning (AfL) is ‘informed feedback to pupils about their work’ (Shaw, 1998). As Broadfoot et al (1999) […]
3rd June 2020

Home learning during school closures: A minibeasts project for primary pupils

Author: Catherine Brennan, Better Bilingual   As I write this, it is Mental Health Awareness Week 2020 (18-24 May) in the UK, hosted by the Mental […]
12th May 2020

Calling home – working with a bilingual support partner

Author: Caroline Scott, author and director   If you have the opportunity to use a bilingual support partner to help families who have learners working from […]
21st April 2020

Discussing learning in the mother tongue

Author: Caroline Scott, author and director   We are all faced with very different learning situations at the moment and home learning has become the current […]
4th March 2020

Mathematics and English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Author: Lois Francis, Ethnic Minority Achievement Adviser, Integra Schools, South Gloucestershire Council   It is often easier for learners who are new to English to cope […]
28th January 2020

International Mother Language Day (IMLD)

Author: Sarah Jones, EAL Coordinator   International Mother Language Day (IMLD) is a worldwide observance celebrated annually on 21st February. It promotes awareness of cultural and […]
7th January 2020

Teaching a series of EAL Healthy Eating sessions

Author: Yzanne Mackay   New Year is a time to take stock – and often to think about making changes. One of the most common New […]
10th December 2019

Using musical activities to support language development

Author: Dr. Anne Margaret Smith   There are many similarities between music and language, in the way they are organised, processed and produced. Music therefore has […]
19th November 2019

The amazing journey of sixteen six-year-old EAL new arrivals entering the mainstream

Author: Sarah Jones, EAL Coordinator, Lea Forest Academy   In September 2015, Lea Forest Academy took on an additional class of 16 Year 2 newly arrived […]
25th September 2019

Home-school Partnerships: Ideas to engage newly arrived parents

Author: Yzanne Mackay   “Parental involvement is invaluable for any new arrival in transition. The learner’s family may be the only group of people who truly […]
3rd September 2019

Designing a supportive EAL resource

Authors: Caroline Scott, Yzanne Mackay   “Scaffolding is the process a teacher uses to model or demonstrate how to solve a problem (in the case of […]
4th July 2019

Communication through images

Author: Anita Bamberger   When considering the Chinese language, the Chinese proverb ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ is apposite. Chinese is a complex language of […]
5th June 2019

An Edtech Pilot – using the Sentence Analyser

Author: Sarah Jones, EAL Co-ordinator   The Sentence Analyser was piloted by the children and staff in the EAL Hub at Lea Forest Academy in the […]
13th May 2019

Is Maths really a universal language for EAL learners?

Author: Yasmin Malik, Senior Education Consultant   Maths is often a subject that is not given the same priority as others when it comes to the […]
21st March 2019

Try your own ‘Introduce Me’ activity

Author: Stuart Scott This ‘Introduce Me’ activity is a fun and rewarding way to introduce a new topic, while developing language skills. It’s ideally suited to […]
28th February 2019

A pathway for induction-to-English

Author: Caroline Scott 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 […]
22nd January 2019

How do I pilot an edtech learning tool? A tool for linking to whole-class teaching

Author: Sarah Jones Introduction Lea Forest, my school in Birmingham, has been using the Learning Village for over three years. It has proved a highly effective learning […]
12th December 2018

EAL Development at Tudor Primary – A school using the Learning Village

Authors: Caroline Scott, Heather Day, Ragini Patel Three years ago, Heather Day, an EAL consultant, contacted us about piloting the Learning Village in an inner London […]
27th November 2018

Friendship building for new arrivals

Author: Caroline Scott, author and director   The National Learning and Work Institute (2018) completed a randomised controlled trial of a Community-Based English Language intervention aimed […]
23rd November 2013

Five Best Language Learning Tools

//lifehacker.com/five-best-language-learning-tools-1448103513?utm_s…
23rd November 2013

This animated history of the English language is wonderful

//boingboing.net/2013/11/14/animated-history-of-the-englis.html Video:
24th November 2013

The Noun Project: interview with the creators of massive icon library

//boingboing.net/2013/11/21/the-noun-project-interview-wi.html
14th December 2013

What do you teach EAL new arrivals with limited English?

If you have EAL new arrivals in your school with limited English, you need a scheme of work that supports them with language learning, alongside the […]
14th December 2013

Free EAL advice and downloads!

Coming in the New Year… a series of articles with free downloadable teaching tools and resources! They will be written and produced by Jessica Tweedie. Jessica […]
20th December 2013

The story of my Life is who I am

Coreen Sears gives us an insight into her thoughts… ‘The story of my life is who I am’ When Caroline asked me to write something about […]
21st December 2013

Do you have a large number of EAL learners aged 3-4?

As a Head of Early Years in an international school following the EYFS and IPC curriculums it has always been important to ensure that the teaching […]
21st December 2013

Giving ownership to young learners through the use of a Remember Book

Supporting the learning of the new language is by no means the only aspect of helping a new arrival to feel ‘at home’ in their new […]
21st December 2013

Is anyone starting the New Year with a new EAL arrival in their class?

We’d love to hear from you! Where are they from? What langauge do they speak? Do you feel prepared!? Have a look at these videos of new arrivals and how […]
21st December 2013

EAL Assessment Continuum for transitioning EAL learners into the English National Curriculum Levels

This EAL Assessment booklet is produced by NASSEA (National Association of Support Services and Equality & Achievement) and provides a detailed scale which aligns to the National Curriculum: //nassea.org.uk/assessments/ An alternative […]
21st December 2013

Progression in Language Structures

Progression in Language Structures is a great document for identfying how content learning can be built on language structures.  Language structures are presented in sentence starters […]
29th December 2013

‘Changing shoes’ lesson plan: Putting yourself in the new arrival’s shoes

Scenario: Imagine that you were told you were going to move to a new country (pick a country that has a different written script, such as China, […]
Across Cultures

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