A useful insight into differentiation for EAL learners from one of our beginner teachers.
Last week, I had an opportunity to look back at my students’ work from when I began my placement at Harlington. It was a sound start, but I was surprised at how much the quality of work from students has improved since then, when some students began only by having the date in their book and now they are able to produce good quality work in the lesson.
In the first week at Harlington, I received a class list for one of my teaching classes, I had students from 3 different continents, speaking 7 different languages and time studied in the UK ranging from 1 week to roughly 8 years. I was overwhelmed and clueless on how to plan lessons for EAL students, so I simply ignored this information and delivered the lesson as if I was in a mainstream school in rural Britain. During the lesson, students appeared to be at 100% concentration, some students decided to take a nap and some meticulously took down notes from the entire powerpoint presentation. Not surprisingly, the learning outcomes from the class were mixed and I was told to take action immediately on making the lesson suitable for all students.
Therefore, one day I planned a lesson where students would extract information from a simple paragraph (hence able to work independently) and I could spend more time with particular students who were finding the language difficult. With that particular group, I was able to divide them into 3 categories:
- No difficulties in reading/disruptions caused by behaviour issues
- Some difficulties – can find information from texts but need some further explanation and guidance as a small group
- Major difficulties – struggling to find information from texts
The descriptions and outcomes for all 3 groups are very different but they were all EAL students. Sometimes the EAL sub-grades (A1-complete beginner to C2-very fluent user) are good indications, but you never know how much progress they could make even during a term. Here are the students’ EAL grades under the 3 categories I mentioned from above:
- A2-B2
- B1
- A1
As you can see, the EAL sub-grades can be a good indicator to identify students in group 2 and 3 but they can progress to group 1 when they could comprehend the language without much difficulty. With group 2 and 3, I begin with a short explanation using a mini white board to guide students with the task. After the explanation, group 2 students were able to continue with the task without much difficulty whereas group 3 students needed more guidance. Eventually group 3 students were able to attempt the task by highlighting a given list of keywords before attempting the original task. Even though this may mean more work to be done for planning lessons, at least now all students are able to work in class and able to have a more satisfying science lesson.
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