English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Organizing the space

Many people think of the teaching environment as an afterthought, but the spaces we learn in serve to teach as much as the written curriculum or the teacher themselves. The environment is one of the first things I concider and I always try to design spaces to maximise engagement and be another teacher.

Multilingual Labels

This gives students a starting place and allows students from a variety of backgrounds to collaborate

Student Made

Students enjoy a space more when they have a say in what it looks like and hav contributed to its creation. Asking what phrases are useful to them s important.

Language Profiles

Developing an understanding of how students think affirms their identity and helps teachers understand them better

Organized by topic

When I organize many kinds of activities that target a topic, it allows students options about how they will learn

Easy Access for All

The activities are all put in a space that is open for any student to request its use and where they can also take responsibility to clean it up.

Frequent change

Evolving the themes and graphical components of the room with student art keeps students looking to learn whats new

Student Levels

Testing Students Language Level for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening

I learned how to teach and administer WIDA tests to guage student language levels from K-12.
These tests were surprisingly accurate to real world application and let me know student strengths and weakenesses and allowed me to help them develop learning goals

Making Learning Fun

Student Goals

Students were given options to approach their learning in a variety of ways. Students visualized their progress on these charts and got some kind of public recognition when they reached a goal.

Enhancing from Home

I became quite proficient at creating lessons that students could access from home to reinforce classroom learning. See-Saw was a great platform for this.

Giving time for online help

I made time during the week where students were allowed to use their devices and get help with any online homework

Make it a Game

From a giant board game that fills the floor, to hammering new vocabulary words, to smashing sounds with a question car, turning learning into a game makes students eager to try something new instead of being intimidated by it and overcomes anxiety.

Start with the sounds

There is a lot of debate on which is the best way to teach students to read and write in English.

Phonics? Sight Words?... I found an approach that bridged the gap between the two. THRASS begins with the sounds in English. Students start from the sounds they hear and know and build up vocabulary learning the sounds of the word along with the variety of ways English spelling can make those sounds. When we learn that the word fudge is written with the g sound as in bridge, we can decode without being confused. Just thinking that there are 26 letters without understanding there are 44 sounds, confuses and frustrates students new to the language.

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