Our specialist EAL consultant Manny Vazquez recently delivered a professional studies session jointly to both primary and secondary trainees for the Sutton SCITT.
Comments from trainees
‘Manny was exceptionally informative and engaging and spoke with clarity’
‘I enjoyed the guest speaker and felt engaged throughout the whole day’
‘Really amazing speaker’
‘Manny was very knowledgeable and he organised the session in a way that approached the theme from all angles giving us several good examples and strategies.’
‘It was very engaging, with activity after activity. It was diverse, with several different resources well prepared, some of them being quite unexpected, like the one with the exercise in Russian!’
Some of the key takeaways and learning that stood out to trainees included:
The use of photo banks to help with EAL understanding (dual coding).
Modelling sentences from tables to extend writing and descriptive matrices
Use of graphic organisersThe importance of reducing learning objectives to make it accessible for students without overwhelming their cognitive load
I really enjoyed the ‘learning a new language’ part of the session. It helped me understand how pupils might feel when encountering English for the first time and gave me ideas on how we can support them in our subject.
The exercise in Russian and the Bingo
The practical way to conduct the (EAL) activities in class. The speaker demonstrated how it actually can be done in class.
I will use T charts, graphic organisers, simplify sentences and labelling with my students
Extremely useful and helpful in order to help EAL students but the strategies are helpful to all.