New / Recent Arrival students:
A teacher's role in supporting a new/recent arrival EAL/D student includes (Brock & Rankin, 2008):
- Be aware of how you use language in the classroom
- Model language that students can imitate
- Match language to activities and experiences
- Repeat vocabulary very regularly in meaningful situations
- Ensure students understand the vocabulary
- Allow time for children to think, consolidate and translate
- Connect first language to additional language
- Encourage and praise to promote self-confidence
Provide a wealth of experiences (Brock & Rankin, 2008):
- Promote a lot of opportunities for children to talk
- Consolidate language and meaning
- Offer exciting, stimulating and meaningful activities
- Make learning fun
- Promote learning through play, first-hand and active experiences
- Support learning through practical resources, visual support and other students
A variety of teaching strategies to develop early reading skills (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011):
- Extensive read-aloud activities to build background knowledge and vocabulary in mother tongue
- Use of key words to reading approach, the language-experience approach, and shared reading of authentic literature at the beginning stages to introduce the concept of print for students who do not have a rich print environment in the home
- Phonetic awareness activities emerging from vocabulary in students' background knowledge and from shared literature experiences
- An inductive whole-part-whole strategy for teaching phonics, with elements emerging from words the students have acquired in the preceding activities
- Use of authentic literature in first language to serve as a basis for teaching reading comprehension
- Extensive and early opportunities for writing