How are your y2 EAL children supported?

[SarfEast1cated]

I am in my PGCE placement at a really lovely inner London junior school. We have a lot of EAL children in our class, but one is concerning me. I can't go into a lot of detail about his background but I am in Y2. How much time would an EAL child with very little English in your class spend being supported to learn English? The child in question has a very low ability in writing, but is OK at maths. I just don't know if he will catch up as he goes through the school, or if he needs more help than he's getting. No criticism of my school implied, because they are really lovely, I'm just curious!

None, I'm afraid. As a class teacher I make everything as visual and animated as possible, and use lots of strategies to promote language acquisition, but they get no formal support ( and this is including 3 new arrivals to the UK from Eastern Europe, all speaking different languages, with no English at all, and no experience if formal schooling before this).

Crikey Padkin, that sounds challenging, are they settling in ok? Most of our EAL children are girls and seem to have all bonded in the playground. Even though they may not have the best vocab, it doesn't seem to faze them. The boy I am concerned about is a bit more isolated, and I worried that he might disengage and start playing up.

In my cluster of schools we employ an EAL support working. She spends about 1/2 a day a week in our school- so about 20 minutes per child referred to her (just the most in need, school is 50% EAL). So for most EAL children, nothing and for some, 20 minutes a week. You just have to get on with it.

There is often no support until juniors as infants is considered a good environment for language acquisition generally. Children do pick language up incredibly quickly.

It might be worth finding some pictures to help the child communicate if you are worried about him becoming isolated. If you were a student on placement in my class I would love that you have looked out for him and found things to help.

I've got a new EAL girl in my class and she doesn't get that much support outside the classroom. Sometimes once a week she'll have 20 minutes session of one to one with the TA .
But she's making good progress in class especially for someone who hasn't been to school before.

Scotland - we have one travelling EAL teacher who has to cover primary and secondary for loads of schools. There has been a massive increase in the number of EAL pupils over the last 10 years but no increase in specialist teaching time. We feel that kids just arrive in our school and just "have to get on with it"

I had a girl in my class who spoke no English at all. I was given no support. I gave her a set of cards from sparkle box which she could show me if she needed toilet etc. The other children were helpful and she did start to pick up the language but initially she was quite scared and cried a bit. This was in a KS1 class. I used to give her extra maths games to do as she couldn't access the English lessons at first

Our school is 30% EAL with a constant stream of arrivals with no English. We arent in London. We have a TA who has done a few courses in EAL. She runs weekly booster groups with them in groups of about 6, which look at vocabulary building. We also have fans with pictures on for the first few weeks. They have happy, sad, toilet, lunch, home time etc. There is also a family learning course run once a year where parents learn how to support their children. An outside agency does that. They have to have been resident in an EU country for 3 years to qualify for the funding though. We also ask willing EAL parents to come in and teach all the children a nursery rhyme in their home language and others (with the skills) to read a traditional child's story with pictures etc so all the children can experience what it's like to be 'taught' in another language. But mainly they just get on with it and manage quite well. (Can I just clarify I don't teach, I work in the office but I did the admin for these things which is why I know about them)