“The first rule of EAL is to talk about EAL”
As Head of the EAL department, one of my responsibilities was to deliver a short session on teaching EAL pupils at a summer-time meeting of NQTs held annually at our school. Instead of standing at the front and lecturing people on something they definitely had some experience in and some opinions on, I opted to ask them to sit in groups and discuss some questions about supporting the learning of EAL pupils in secondary schools, such as:
or:
The questions on the cards came from my experience and reading. On the back of each discussion card, I included some responses (also from my experience and reading), so teachers could consider how their own responses fit in. Here’s one:
As they discussed, I walked around the room, answering questions and engaging here and there. The NQTs seemed to find it helpful to think about and share their experiences of teaching EAL pupils and to talk about any areas they weren’t confident about or foudn difficult. I love ending a CPD session by asking participants to share their key takeaway on a Padlet – see below for some great ones!
Here is the full list of discussion questions.
What would you need to consider / do if:
- ..if an EAL learner is silent?
- ..if an EAL learner appears unengaged?
- ..when checking understanding of EAL learners?
- ..to ensure your lesson helps EAL learners to access the content?
- ..to support EAL pupils learn the academic vocabulary of your subject?
- ..if an EAL learner speaks almost fluent English, but produces poor written work?
- ..if you have two Chinese EAL students in your class who are speaking Chinese together?
- ..if an EAL student doesn’t do their homework?
- ..if an EAL learner hands in work copied from the internet?
- ..if an EAL learner takes lots of notes in the lesson but doesn’t seem able to apply them?
- ..if an EAL learner asks to look up a word on their phone?
- ..if an EAL learner consistently makes the same mistakes in written work?
- ..if an EAL learner seems very tired?
Would you add anything?
To download these conversation cards, please click on the image below. And if you do use them, please let me know how you got on!
If this resource that I made saved you a bunch of time and you’re looking for a way to say thank you – https://www.buymeacoffee.com/EmmaGL 🙂
A Hive of Activities 
Hi Emma, I really enjoy reading your blog and your discussion cards are a helpful reminder of many things all of us should be doing in our language classes. Thanks!
Cheers, Ben! 😃