Author Archives

Teacher and Materials Writer

• EAL adaptations: Poetry, Year 6

  By Pete on March 7, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  Our current poetry unit with Year 6 is probably the strongest planning I’ve picked up this year. Minimal adaptation needed, mostly accessible, fun, and the level of challenge is spot on really. It just needs tiny tweaks. Here are some… Read More ›

• EAL adaptations: fantasy writing, rationales

  By Pete on February 21, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  Here are some more scaffolding tweaks I’ve made to our Year 7 mainstream English content. Last term, learners studied ‘Fantasy Writing’. It was an awesome topic and the in-house resources overall were brilliant. I had tons of fun teaching it!… Read More ›

• Coursebook evaluation in… EAL?!

  By Pete on February 18, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  I’m using more coursebooks in my current practice than I have done in a long time. This has put the importance of coursebook evaluation on my radar again. Coursebooks and EAL Adopting coursebook-driven ELT curricula in EAL contexts wouldn’t be… Read More ›

• Community building activities for tutor time

  By Pete on February 16, 2026 • ( 1 )

  

  Last year, Joel Lawrence and I worked on some community building resources for tutor time at St. Joes. They were meant to be used as part of an induction phase, maybe weeks 1-2 of term. Nothing ground-breaking here! Just sharing… Read More ›

• Interview task: create a lesson for a Year 10 IGCSE ESL class

  By Pete on February 15, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  I recently had an interview for a Head of EAL role here in Bangkok. It was for a school called King’s College, which is a fairly new school with a good reputation. I did okay – made it through to… Read More ›

• AI experiments: IGCSE ESL speaking assessment bank

  By Pete on February 8, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  Yep, I’m still AI-novicing over here. Today I was looking for a quick fix for the upcoming IGCSE ESL speaking exams (window opens end of March). I wanted a curated bank of tests, or at least test-like questions for all… Read More ›

• EAL adaptations: Lonely Planet Travel Writing

  By Pete on February 8, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  I teach a mainstream Year 7 class. The overall level is very high, but sometimes I think the in-house content we have could do with more scaffolding at times. I mean, it’s awesome content – I’m just talking a few… Read More ›

• EAL adaptations: Floodland

  By Pete on February 5, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  I teach a support group of EAL learners in Year 6. We study the same content as all other English classes and take the same assessment. It’s just that the content and lesson resource needs a bit of adapting to… Read More ›

• ‘We’re on a journey with Bell / WIDA’

  By Pete on February 2, 2026 • ( 2 )

  

  I hear this a lot during my interviews for EAL teaching/leadership roles. It’s in response to my question about which EAL assessment tool(s) the school use and *the extent to which they are embedded*.  I love the honest responses from… Read More ›

• Interview task: Optimising the development of SLA in an international school

  By Pete on January 17, 2026 • ( 0 )

  

  I had a positive job hunting experience towards the end of this week. I put out the feelers for work at a good school on Wednesday, was offered an interview on Thursday, interviewed Friday morning, then rejected Friday afternoon.  Why… Read More ›