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4th December 2024
Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) for creating EAL lesson plans With EAL learners making up a diverse group with varying English proficiency levels and needs, differentiating class […]
10th October 2024
Author: Sally Hay, EAL Specialist It is difficult enough to teach a classroom of new students as a substitute teacher (or relief teacher as we call […]
13th August 2024
Author: Iva Miteva, EAL Specialist August is the time to take that well-deserved break from school, colleagues, and learners, and to rest, have fun, and hopefully […]
11th June 2024
Author: Miranda Howell English is a language which has developed over 15 hundred years and has adopted words from over 350 languages. As a result, English […]
20th May 2024
Author: Iva Miteva, EAL Specialist What does ‘cross-curricular teaching’ mean? Beckmann (2009) defines the term ‘cross-curricular teaching’ as ‘instruction within a field in which subject boundaries […]
10th April 2024
Author: Breda Matthews, EAL Specialist Linguists including Derewianka (2001), Droga and Humphrey (2003), Knapp and Watkins (2005), and Gibbons (2009) suggest that scaffolding writing is critical […]
7th February 2024
Author: Miranda Howell, EAL specialist I will never forget the ‘feelings’ I experienced during my EAL teacher training, when I sat in a class with a […]
10th January 2024
Author: Iva Miteva, EAL Specialist There is no denying that in the 21st century, teachers have gone from strength to strength in using technology in the […]
27th November 2023
Author: Caroline Scott, Author and Director with Learning Village by Across Cultures Small group teaching is an approach in which learners are divided into small groups […]
25th October 2023
Author: Iva Miteva, EAL specialist 你好 Привіт Merhaba Здравей Buna ziua ہیلو Cześć How often do you hear these in the school playground? And actually, not […]
4th October 2023
Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a human rights treaty that encompasses specific children’s rights […]
30th August 2023
Author: Shalu Aara, EAL Specialist A learner’s wellbeing is vital to their achievement and overall success. Nevertheless, an EAL (English as an Additional Language) learner’s wellbeing […]
28th June 2023
Author: Martha Giannakaki, EAL Specialist Our EAL learners are by no means a homogeneous group of learners and their needs in our classroom will vary to […]
30th May 2023
Author: Iva Miteva, EAL Specialist What is the role of an EAL teacher? An EAL teacher is a professional specialising in working with learners for whom […]
25th April 2023
Author: Miranda Howell, EAL Specialist What should we teach? Many of us have been in a situation where we want to communicate with someone who does […]
22nd March 2023
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 […]