I recently mentioned how our learners created a final display board in response to a unit on poetry. Here’s a screenshot of what our common assessment checklist looked like for the final product: I could scrutinize here – there’s room… Read More ›
reflections
ChatGPT experiments: New unit intros (IGCSE ESL)
Luiz Octávio Barros was asking about scripts we feed ChatGPT the other day. I mentioned this: Which is a very boring example of an (over the word count) type IGCSE ESL text I generate for correction practice. I’m not *massively*… Read More ›
Conventional, common-sense vocabulary and grammar instruction (Boers)
Boers (2021) outlines six explicit vocabulary and grammar teaching practices that are backed up by research. He does so almost apologetically, noting that most of the practices align with more traditional/conventional methods, and that they also seem ‘commonsensical’. I lack… Read More ›
One of our research areas is missing
I’ve been flicking through Jamie Clark’s Teaching One-Pagers recently, and overall I’m a big fan. Evidence-informed summaries of research and practice – informative, accessible, perfect for the staffroom coffee table. As Oliver Caviglioli points out in the foreword, One-Pagers is… Read More ›
Pre-teaching academic vocabulary
This term we’re trialing an approach to pre-teaching academic vocabulary. Here’s the basic process: Step 1: Subject teachers identify 10-12 items of key vocab for an upcoming topic in either science, humanities, or maths. This should happen a couple of… Read More ›
Using the Bell Assessment Framework in hybrid EAL provision
I’ve written a few things on the Bell Assessment Framework this past year. Here were my initial reflections on implementing the framework, and some musings on how it could be improved. In this post, I share some thoughts on using… Read More ›
Financial advice in TEFL
The first time I ‘planned for the future’ was in 2015. I’d just joined the British Council that August. The move felt like my commitment to an ELT career, and with it came thinking about family, finances, and ‘you know,… Read More ›
EAL Digest, August 2024
I’ve had some help from Adri Szlapak with this update! We’ve been adding interesting EAL stuff to a doc throughout the month. Here it all is! New releases Pedagogies for Equitable Access was released at the end of July. For… Read More ›
‘What a good lesson looks like’
The personal statement for the Assessment Only Route to QTS is 2000 words. In this statement, you should respond to the following questions: So, you’ve got roughly 400 words to address each question. This took some thinking about. Reflecting on… Read More ›
Leading EAL: quality assurance processes
Our senior leadership team (SLT) oversee a broad-ranging quality assurance process at our school. Here are some of the processes we have undertaken as a department to reflect on/ensure the quality of EAL provision in our context. These may seem… Read More ›
ELT Planning 