Recommendations:
Key features for effective teaching of EAL/d Students:
- Determine students' individual learning needs and adapt your activities according to the students' needs (Vass, 2014)
- Work with other professionals, as a team, to create an effective learning environment for the EAL/D student (Vass, 2014)
- Demonstrate respect for everyone in the classroom, through creating close relationships - lead by example (Vass, 2014)
- Creating a positive but flexible curriculum that is closely connected to students' real lives (Vass, 2014)
- Focus on each students' individual strengths and in-depth learning skills (Vass, 2014)
- Provide collaborative learning environments within the classroom (Kerkham & Hutchison, 2005)
- Establish expectations through clear expectations (Vass, 2014)
- Break down tasks / activities into smaller achievable steps (Vass, 2014)
- Encourage organised work habits, e.g. using a diary, time management skills, create pictorial checklists, colour code student's daily routine, create set homework times (Vass, 2014)
- Develop engaging literacy activities which have a clear purpose, using strategies like: Thinker's Keys, Bloom's Taxonomy, Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (Vass, 2014) & Habits of Mind (Bee, Seng & Jusoff, 2013)
- Enable and encourage each student to achieve success, whilst helping them to feel comfortable with taking risks and making errors within the safety of the classroom (Vass, 2014)
- Ensure that each students' intellectual needs are not isolated, e.g. teach to the 'whole child' (Vass, 2014)
- For hard-of-hearing or deaf students, use captioned videos/films, FM receivers or amplification systems, learn Auslan or an appropriate form of sign language, seat the student in an appropriate place and have a notetaker in the classroom (Vass, 2014)
- For visually impaired or blind students, use verbally spelt out words, enlarged activity worksheets, use 3D models or manipulatives, use an interactive whiteboard for visual instructions, use a Braille label maker, use raised items like sand paper letters for tactile learners, record lessons electronically, so the student can listen again in their own time (Vass, 2014)
Teaching EAL/D students literacy skills:
- Match the EAL/D student up with a 'buddy' inside and outside of the classroom (preferably with a student who can successfully communicate in their first language) (PEI, 2012)
- Focus on meaning by creating word walls in the students' first language and have the English equivalent next to the word (PEI, 2012)
- Establish a visual dictionary book, where the student writes an English word and then their first language word under each alphabet letter. They can draw a picture next to the words if that provides further visual cues (PEI, 2012)
- Display alphabet freezes around the classroom that contain visual images for the student to relate to (Vass, 2014)
- Label different items around the classroom, in the student's first language and English (PEI, 2012)
- Guide student in understanding the relationship between letter names and its' sound (Vass, 2014)
- Encourage student to search for the letters in their names on labels or texts around the classroom (Vass, 2014)
- Play a range of literacy games, reinforcing words and sounds, e.g. Lotto or Snap (Smale, 2011)
- Link reading games to texts, e.g. sorting cards (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011), word hunts (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011), matching words on flip cards to words in literature books (Vass, 2014)
- Encourage participation in whole class rhyming games or songs - even in bilingual languages (Smale, 2011); (Vass, 2014); (Marschark, 2007)
- Make a letter or string of letters of the week and ask students to collect items matching that letter (Vass, 2014)
- Work with teacher-student selected sight words for practice (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011)
- Use big books to support learning whilst reading by pointing to and highlighting readily identifiable words (Vass, 2014)
- Incorporate bilingual visual texts into the classroom where possible (Marschark, 2007)
- Write simple sentences using the language that the EAL/D student is capable of understanding, cut it up and ask the student to rearrange the sentence so it makes sense to them (Vass, 2014)
- Re-write familiar stories or folktales, encouraging the student to create their own unique ending (Vass, 2014)
- Draw attention to repetition, rhyme and rhythm in texts (Vass, 2014)
- Focus on students' dictated texts using the language experience approach (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011)
- Focus on vocabulary as the student might know the word big, but not huge, gigantic or enormous (Temple, Ogle, Crawford & Freppon, 2011)
- Celebrate the small successes before creating new goals (Angelo, 2013)