Over the last nine weeks a few teachers committed to an intense and vigorous course to better support EAL ( English as a second language)students in the classroom.
The aims of this course are to:
- Develop teacher’s awareness of the need to take into account the cultural and linguistic diversity and experiences of EAL students and ways in which this can be done.
- Develop teacher’s understanding of the central role that language plays in learning and develop teaching practices that can be used across the curriculum to address the language related needs of EAL students in an explicit manner.
- Provide a positive context for teachers to reflect critically and openly on their teaching and to trial suggested strategies.
- Develop collaborative working relationships between all teachers by having a shared understanding of how to support EAL students.
- Promote whole school approaches to addressing the learning needs of EAL students.
Throughout the nine module course of 25 hours the participants studied its wide-ranging and very comprehensive content. Teachers were required to complete readings and activities(homework)before and after each module. All teachers were thoroughly engaged and actively contributed to every activity.
