EAL

I have extensive experience working with students who speak a wide range of languages and to whom English is an additional language. I celebrate cultural diversity and I create a classroom culture which fosters inclusion. I enjoy learning about my students cultures and special celebrations.

I use the high impact teaching strategies (HITS) to provide a differentiated and engaging learning environment for all of my students.

In order to cater for the needs of the EAL learners in my class I ensure that I use a wide range of visuals in my classroom including videos and pictures. I also ensure that I speak clearly and model the tasks to my students to lessen the cognitive load. Additionally, I ensure that the lessons I teach are highly differentiated and that I have a clear understanding of the EAL curriculum. I also ensure that I use environmental print in the classroom and provide my students with rich and meaningful authentic experiences to aid their learning.

I understand the importance of providing all students with the opportunity to discuss their thinking but this is especially true for EAL students. In all of my lessons I utilise dialogic discussion and when possible collaborative learning.

An example of an open ended lesson which incorporated visuals was a Maths lesson I taught about arrays and multiplication. This lesson was accessible to all learners in my classroom and the EAL students in my classroom were able to use the pictures to understand the task.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/c9b139_414eaaab3b2b4a1dbdfb4fe9a35f255a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

After watching this video I then modelled the task to my students using Jamboard.

My students were then provided with multiple ways to solve this problem.