EAL & Multilingual Learners

Supporting EAL learners

EAL Pedagogy and Practice

The Bell Foundation provide comprehensive advice on planning and support for EAL learners. Their website is available here:

https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/

They describe EAL pedagogy as being underpinned by the following principles:

1. Bilingualism and multilingualism are an asset – the ability to use more than one language is a valuable skill that learners who use EAL bring with them, regardless of whether they are New to English or not. Learners actively use the languages they already know to learn English.

2. Cognitive challenge should be kept appropriately high – high expectations around cognitive challenge should be maintained. Access to the curriculum is needed, but this does not imply the “dumbing down” of the content. For example, a learner from Greece might be highly skilled at Maths but using English as the language of instruction might be preventing them from engaging fully in the Maths lessons in England.

3. Learners’ proficiency in English is closely linked to academic success – Research has found that proficiency in English is the strongest predictor of academic achievement (Strand and Hessel, 2018)

The Bell Foundation also provide a summary of advice on supporting EAL learners in the classroom. This is available via the link below:

https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/eal-programme/guidance/effective-teaching-of-eal-learners/

Planning learning

Education Scotland's guidance pack, "Learning in 2 plus languages" includes guidance on engaging with parents, supporting EAL learners (school and classroom) and assessing progress. It is avialable via the following link:

https://education.gov.scot/improvement/learning-resources/learning-in-2-languages/

Further to this, the website www.headteacher-update.com includes an excellent summary of key considerations when planning and including:

· Classroom organisation

· On-going differentiation

· Language focus

· Marking/feedback

· Communication with home

· CLPL and professional learning

The full overview is available via the link below:

https://www.headteacher-update.com/best-practice-article/supporting-eal-learners-in-your-classroom-1/200731/

Assessment

The Bell Foundation ‘EAL Assessment Framework’ is a good place to start with the assessment and tracking of a child’s proficiency of the English language. The assessment is ideally completed by adults who are familiar with the child, such as the class teacher and a parent.

It is free to register with the website. Once registered, there are a range of guidance tutorials, documents and webinars that can be watched to support with the use of the available tools. All aspects of the Framework can be used, or this can be adapted to best suit the need of the teacher and child, for example by making use of the ‘classroom strategies’.

https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/eal-programme/eal-assessment-framework/

Further support and learning