One benefit of being an EAL teacher is that we’re not in a ‘subject bubble’. We support our learners in various subjects, meaning we get a good insight into content across the KS3/KS4 curriculum (or at least phases of it)…. Read More ›
eal
Some regular EAL activities
Here are few things I do / use in my EAL practice that didn’t feature much (if at all) when I worked at the British Council. I’m just sharing for general interest and it’s actually been prompted by some of… Read More ›
EAL Science and CLILing it
I’m supporting in some really interesting classes this term, especially Science. The subject knowledge of those Science teachers is pretty impressive, especially once you get to KS4. The need for language support in our class tends to be high. The… Read More ›
Showcase: Greci Cristina Queiroz Taylor and Sally Roberts
As a language teacher, you know that if your pupils are trying to use their English in a productive and independent way, they are likely to make mistakes. That’s fine, it shows they are giving it a go! The problem… Read More ›
Poetry lesson: What do you hear?
Here’s a short poetry task that worked well with YLs and teens. It’s based on a poem from A Nest Full of Stars by James Berry. Before you ask, no. I haven’t suddenly gone all NLP. Aims Create a… Read More ›
Towards building a whole-school approach to EAL
I enjoyed Adri’s post on EAL vs ESL the other day. It’s great to read so many positives regarding EAL culture at her school: teamwork, addressing individual needs, building a whole-school EAL approach, etc. Based on Adri’s comments, I feel… Read More ›
EAL presentation tasks
I’ve been teaching an intensive English course this term. It works out (online) at about 8 hours per week, would have been a lot more had we not been back in lockdown. Seven students, Japanese, between 12 and 14 years… Read More ›
Timesaver: Conversation starters
Here’s a quick fix warmer while you’re waiting for all students to arrive in your online class. I googled ‘conversation starters’ the other day and found this list of questions 225 starter questions on gifts.com. I pasted these questions into… Read More ›
Using Loom
Here’s a quick overview of Loom and why I like it. What’s Loom? Loom is a video recording / screencasting tool. It is available as a Google extension. I first came across this tool after reading this post last year…. Read More ›
Text analysis, level checks, profiling, etc
A new subscriber, Gemma Archer, just asked about text profilers. I’ve shared this response as a comment but thought I’d paste here as might crowdsource some more ideas??? Help please 🙂 (Response) I use, or have used, text inspector (free… Read More ›