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 ›
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 ›
End of term. Rocking the classic ELT games with genuine purpose. Lesson time: 40 mins. Context: Year 10. Three learners. Biology. We’ve been reviewing such topics as… cell structure, specialized cells, the circulatory system, the components of blood. Game prep:… Read More ›
Context: Year 10 support class, only three learners, 1 hour Materials: whiteboards, pens Lead-in: What lesson did you just have and how was it? Learner responses – maths, so-so because we had a test. We discussed some of the test… Read More ›
In my previous post about the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), I mentioned how certain EAL assessment descriptors are more aligned with the CEFR than we might think.. What I should have said is that the Bell… Read More ›
I’ve heard plenty of EAL teachers dissing the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). ‘It’s not relevant for assessing EAL learners’, ‘it’s too general’, etc. This is another of those areas in which I kinda understand the sentiment,… Read More ›
Have you ever set up a new EAL department? If so, how did you go about establishing your targets and priorities for development? In this (very niche) post, I’ll summarize how I approached this at the start of the academic… Read More ›
Last term, Heads of Department (‘HoDs’) in our school were given an interesting task! We were instructed to work with our teams to devise a list of criteria for ‘what makes an outstanding [subject] lesson?’ These criteria would then help… Read More ›
In our upcoming resource, Adri Szlapak and I mention culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in EAL teaching. Here’s a quick summary of the concept and some random reflections on it. What is CSP? In the intro to this article, Paris (2012)… Read More ›
I had a great moment today that I’m banking through this blog post. Basically, I’d never really considered how much could be gained from collaborating over a wall display. Sounds random. But you know what it is like as a… Read More ›
ELT Planning 