Mike’s Blog
Strategies, Ideas and Insights for Teachers and Leaders
Tag: eal strategies
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Instantly simplify speaking and listening for your EAL learners with your own set of curated speaking and listening success criteria
‘Speaking and Listening Success Criteria’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale It can be hard to achieve success, although it is much harder if you do not know what criteria you…
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Amplify your EAL learners’ listening power with one of the simplest yet most effective scaffolding strategies you’ll ever find
‘Listening Frames’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale When dealing with any piece of text you are forever safe in the knowledge that, at any point, you can look back and…
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Does your talk have a purpose? If you can answer this question, you’re already halfway to better supporting every EAL learner in your classroom
‘Talk with Purpose’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale Talking helps us to formulate ideas, articulate thoughts and refine our thinking. For learners to achieve these ends in the classroom it…
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Does anyone know what’s going on when talk is happening in your lessons? Why making the rules of talk explicit could be the golden key to increasing your EAL learners’ speaking and listening confidence
‘The Rules of Talk’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale This strategy is a different way of opening up speaking and listening success criteria for your EAL learners. It refers explicitly…
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Take control of the atmosphere in your classroom and start making it conducive to maximum engagement from your EAL learners
‘Assessing the Atmosphere’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale Getting the atmosphere right in the classroom is a fine art, not least when you’re making good use of speaking and listening.…
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Go beyond the basics of scaffolding and give your EAL learners the best chance of supercharging their listening development with this simple strategy
‘Listening Assistance’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale Listening can be a strenuous business. There is the matter of decoding meaning, of sustaining attention, and of assessing the value of what…
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Harness the power of the visual to support your EAL learners in a way that transcends the very nature of the spoken word
Many years ago, I was first introduced to the paintings of JMW Turner. At that time, I knew little about the background to his works or the historical context in…
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Skip past the challenges of decoding a new language and give your EAL learners instant clues they can use to make sense of new words and phrases
‘Pictures for Meaning’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale If you’re familiar with the content of an image, you can decode it. You can start make sense of what it means,…
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Use this simple visual hack to make every task you plan that little bit easier for your EAL learners to understand, make sense of, and take part in
‘Pictures for Tasks’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale Throughout a lesson, learners are asked to engage in a variety of tasks. These may involve quite different behaviours, interactions, and outcomes.…
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Turn your class rules into instantly accessible visual cues your EAL learners can make sense of on their own
‘Pictures for Class Rules’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale Most social situations have rules of some sort, even if these are not explicitly stated. For example, in the United Kingdom…