Knowing your students: EAL Learner Profiles

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    • #9600
      lorim
      Participant

      I have recently started as a Learning Specialist at a school with a large EAL student population and am presently working on gathering information on all EAL learners from Years 7-11 so that staff are more informed about the students in their classrooms. I have developed an EAL Learner Profile document which records both general and personal information. This is scanned with a personal letter completed by each student which is then placed on the school Share Drive. It is also attached as a pinned chronicle entry on Compass so that it is easily accessible. This provides staff with information not necessarily received from enrollment/transition documents. This is a time-consuming process but really worthwhile and appreciated by mainstream teaching staff. eg: staff can now have conversations with their students about their interests, language etc and can consider making cultural links with resources and planning. The written student response also shows staff their writing ability. Feedback has been positive.

      • This topic was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by lorim.
    • #10689
      moonse
      Participant

      Hi EAL teachers,

      Alex and myself (Sarah) are classroom teachers who have a large proportion of EAL students in our school community. It was great to attend the first day of this PD to learn more about how to assess our students. Our EAL coordinator wanted us to deliver what we learnt at the PD to our classroom teachers. We decided to just quickly show them how to navigate to the speaking and listening rubric and videos which guide them through the assessment. As it was a short PD that we delivered, we weren’t able to show them extensively what we learnt, just an introduction. We also showed our teachers the list of ‘what EAL students said they would like their teachers to do’ page and the ‘getting to know your EAL students’ list of questions as we found these really useful also. We found this was a really good reminder for our staff of how important it is to get to know students and families to ease the transition process.

      • #10694
        mswalta
        Participant

        Yes Moonse,
        I also have to present to staff and I’m planning on showing them the ‘Getting to know your EAL students’ questions. It is something that as an EAL intervention teacher I really need to work on myself too. It’s so difficult to find out a lot of the information unfortunately so I’m keen to know how other people go about it.

        • #10699
          puneetachanana
          Participant

          It is a great idea to get to know your EAL students at the beginning of the year.
          I jot down notes as I meet my students individually for informal testing and getting to know you session.
          The first session does take a bit of time but it is worth every minute. There are things you get to know about their personal, family, academic, social, religious and cultural backgrounds.
          Have a go and see if it helps.

    • #10809
      linda2
      Participant

      Thanks for these helpful posts. Our team of three will be asked to present some of what we’ve learnt to the staff. These are great ideas about where to start.

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