In this episode, Claire meets Beth Southern, an experienced EAL Consultant and a Specialist Leader of Education for EAL. Beth has taught extensively in both primary and secondary schools, and she is the creator of EAL HUB which provides a range of resources to support EAL learners in the mainstream classroom. Many teachers also use her resources for non-EAL children with limited vocabulary.

Since a significant number of schools in the UK have a high number of EAL pupils, Beth believes that training teachers to support them should play a much larger part of PGCE courses and teacher training programmes. Courses often provide only one training session for trainees, which can often be just 2.5 hours long, so it is extremely difficult to condense the necessary skills into such a short period of time.

During her discussion with Claire, Beth shares a huge range of practical advice and tips to support EAL children and their parents. She stresses the importance of ensuring that EAL pupils are given the opportunity to work with ‘more able’ children in the class who can model good vocabulary and grammar. It is important to steer away from the assumption that they need to work in lower ability groups as this can drastically hinder their progress.

Every EAL child is unique along with their circumstances and background, so there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Beth created the EAL HUB for this very reason – to offer a versatile and holistic EAL hub that is a go-to place for teachers in need of support, resources and training for students learning English.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• TESOL
  If you’re interested in teaching English as a foreign language, Beth recommends taking a TESOL course. It is extremely intensive and this approach gave her the opportunity to vastly improve her grammatical skills and knowledge. Beth feels this course is useful for all teachers of English in primary and secondary schools, as it has such a strong grammatical focus.
  
  
• Do not discourage use of the child’s first language
  EAL children should be encouraged to continue using their first language, especially at home, though it should not be discouraged at school either. Children and parents should be encouraged to read together in their first language. Being aware of some of the conventions and patterns of the child’s first language is extremely useful in supporting them to learn English. For example, articles are not used in Russian so a child might say, “I put on table” because “the” isn’t used in their first language. Arabic learners may mix up lower case and capital letters because this is not part of their first language. It is strongly advised to have an idea of what their first language looks like and the reasons that certain misconceptions may arise. Even languages which appear to be vastly different from English share many words with common roots.
  
  
• EAL is not the same as SEN
  Beth urges teachers to avoid immediately putting EAL children into lower ability sets. Her first suggestion is to find children who can support them. They should be sitting with the ‘more able’ children as they can offer sentence scaffolding and the children can see a good model of where they need to be and they will be exposed to the language they need to hear.
  
  
• Create speaking and listening opportunities in the classroom
  Many Key Stage 2 classrooms no longer make use of role play areas, but Beth thinks these are an incredible resource for all children and especially for EAL pupils. They allow the children to practise valuable, every-day conversations and develop vocabulary fundamental to a secure understanding of the English language.
  
  
• Use picture books for reading and writing
  High-quality picture books offer fantastic support for pupils to read, write and build comprehension. They allow the children to understand what is happening through images. They can see how the character develops, they can follow the emotions and tension, and most importantly they can experience a whole, complete story in a short period of time. Picture books are an invaluable resource for all students, but particularly EAL children.
  
  
• Prepare children for independent learning
  EAL children should be given independent learning opportunities but the teacher first needs to ensure they have got the necessary information and resources to complete independent tasks. Good pre-teaching and input in the lesson is essential to give the children a full understanding of your expectations. Providing them with topic mats and flash cards is also strongly encouraged so that they can access these without adult support.
  
  
• Support the parents of EAL children
  Ensure that the parents of EAL pupils are made to feel welcome and valued to build those important parent/ teacher relationships. Meet with them to model the simple ways that you can keep communication open, for example putting a tick in the reading diary to show reading has been done at home. Many parents are open to the prospect of learning English so any support you can give them as a school is likely to be greatly appreciated.
  
  
• Take care with translation
  As a general rule, teaching resources do not need to be translated. Sharing useful resources with the children such as flash cards, images and videos goes a long way in supporting understanding. If a teacher or TA shares a common language with the pupil, this can be an amazing tool for providing those more in-depth explanations before moving back to English, however it is also crucial to encourage the speaking of English where possible to ensure the child does not become too dependent on this. Beth strongly encourages putting some signs on display in the classroom and around the school in the child’s first language to give them some reassurance that their teachers understand their position. Beth does however warn that although Google Translate has its place, it’s far from perfect. Inaccurate translations are commonplace so it should be used with great caution.
  
  

BEST MOMENTS

“If I got uprooted and got plonked into a classroom in Russia or China, I might not want to speak for a while either!”

“Using their first language is fine. Teachers are afraid of that sometimes and feel they need to stop that… but it is absolutely fine for them to use their first language. We should celebrate that language and they need to keep using it.”

“It’s really important to remember that children that have EAL do not have special needs.”

“Try and get a buddy system in place… It’s always better to have two buddies than one because it’s quite a big ask for a child to be a buddy for somebody who doesn’t speak very much English. It’s frustrating sometimes and it’s tiring.”

“For very vulnerable children, the last thing they’re thinking about is learning English, so for those children it’s literally about nurturing. It’s about making them feel that they’re ok, they’re here and they’re safe.”

“We really need to focus on workload and life/ work balance. How can we make teachers want to teach? How can we allow them to have that creativity? Can we be more creative and can the government have less of a say in education? There’s too much control. It used to be that headteachers had a lot more discretion and were able to do different things.”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

EAL HUB: https://www.ealhub.co.uk/
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ 
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ 
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ 
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/ 

ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.