Have you ever set up a new EAL department? If so, how did you go about establishing your targets and priorities for development? In this (very niche) post, I’ll summarize how I approached this at the start of the academic year. How did I come to set up an EAL department? I’m EAL Lead in a high school. The high school already had some EAL provision in place, and the teachers leading on this were doing a grand job. However, the need for more wide-ranging EAL support emerged due to market shifts here in Malaysia. Embedding quality EAL provision became a key part of the school development plan (go ..read more

Last term, Heads of Department (‘HoDs’) in our school were given an interesting task! We were instructed to work with our teams to devise a list of criteria for ‘what makes an outstanding [subject] lesson?’ These criteria would then help guide various department processes: planning, drop-in observations, in-dept CPD, etc. This was a collaborative way to ‘quality assure’ teaching and learning within each subject context. It was particularly useful for our new EAL department, as it was a good opportunity for us to define a big part of our identity. How did we set about establishing our ‘outstand ..read more

In our upcoming resource, Adri Szlapak and I mention culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in EAL teaching. Here’s a quick summary of the concept and some random reflections on it. What is CSP? In the intro to this article, Paris (2012) describes culturally sustaining pedagogy as an approach that seeks to maintain ‘linguistic, literate and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic process of schooling’. CSP is a movement away from monocultural and (certainly in the sense of EAL) monolingual bias. Enacting CSP promotes equity across communities, equitable access/opportunities, and values cult ..read more

I had a great moment today that I’m banking through this blog post. Basically, I’d never really considered how much could be gained from collaborating over a wall display. Sounds random. But you know what it is like as a leader. You try to ensure effective channels of communication, you want to appear approachable, you want your team to collaborate. You do all that stuff like regular check-ins, regular emails, regular meetings, bad jokes in Google chat, team lunches (I call them munchfests just to make them appear more relaxed). Basically, you do anything you can to build trust and rapport, wi ..read more

I’m setting up a peer observation scheme in my department. Basically, it’s like this: A team member chooses an area of development in their own practice We work out which other team member is competent in that area and pair them up. I create some kind of observation task to help guide things – clearer focus, etc. The pair of teachers complete the observation cycle I’ll work out how we can evaluate the process down the line – we’ve just started. But I have ideas. Anyhow, the areas for development aren’t necessarily EAL-specific. They might relate to core teaching skills, experimental practice ..read more

Dear Pete, As author of the book English for Ticking Boxes, we’d appreciate your input regarding the image choice for the front cover. You’ll be familiar with our earlier range of front cover images for books such as… English for Nostalgic Tourism English for Animal Husbandry and English for actors aspiring to appear in the Highlander movie franchise We felt that last one was too on the nose. Rather like our choice for English for Personification Anyway, we are thinking of continuing our recent ‘esoteric turn’, as we did for titles such as English for Kleptomaniacs And English for Astrona ..read more

In our EAL space we wanted to celebrate the success of our language learners. We chose language learning ‘role models’ from Key Stage 4. These were students who have had success/overcome challenges in their English learning journey since joining the school. We interviewed them, asking questions like: ⁃ what techniques do you use for reviewing vocab? ⁃ How did you overcome the challenge of studying [subject] in English when you first joined the school? What advice would you give new joiners? ⁃ What are your top three tips for learners to improve their listening knowledge English? ⁃ Which novel ..read more

You want to approach a publisher with an idea for an ELT resource. How do you write a proposal/plan/pitch? Some publishers have proposal forms. Myself and my co-author pitched a book to a publisher last year using an in-house proposal form. The publisher requested: An overview of the book Info on the target audience Info on the competition – what’s already out there! How/Where it fits with the publisher’s current format/series So, I guess that’s a starting point. I’ve successfully pitched a few resources to publishers before. Never for the ‘big four’ (if that’s actually a thing), but then it ..read more

We’ve introduced the Bell Assessment Framework to monitor the progress of our EAL learners. Here are some early reflections on the framework and tracking tool, including some challenges arising from its implementation. Why Bell? Adri Szlapak and I are working together as EAL leads across Elementary and High School respectively. We are keen to ensure some consistency in our approach across the school. One way we can do this is to choose assessment/monitoring tools which are familiar across key stages. Adri had used Bell in her previous context, I’d used WIDA. We weighed up the pros and cons of ..read more

Professional development courses in EAL seem few and far between to me. That’s why I jumped at the chance to take this month-long EAL Coordinator course offered through the Bell Foundation – one of the go-to organizations for EAL CPD. The course ran during my first half-term in a new role as a leader in EAL – perfect timing to get some ideas for developing our department. So, what was the course like, and how useful was it? Course Overview There were three modules over the four weeks. Module 1 – Exploring themes in EAL coordination. It started with admin stuff and GTKY stuff – setting up prof ..read more