EAL at The Arnewood School

1. EAL at The Arnewood School

3. EAL EAL: English as an Additional Language Recognises that students may speak several languages in addition to English and that English could be their third, fourth or fifth language. • as opposed to ESL: English as a Second Language • or EFL: English as a Foreign Language (for students living abroad learning English)

4. Learning English as an Additional Language • The methodology is totally different to TEFL. • Students learn English hand-in-hand with the curriculum even if they arrive with very little or no English. • Emphasis is on the subject rather than on de-contextualised grammar. • Withdrawal is used as a last rather than as a first resort.

5. EAL students at Arnewood • Currently 63 students speak English as an Additional Language and a total of 93 are from ethnic minority backgrounds. • The majority have come directly from overseas over the last few years. • They speak 18 different languages. • They come from 15 different countries.

6. Languages Spoken by students at the Arnewood School

7. Families’ Workplaces • The parents of our EAL children in school are nearly all working in the health care industry in local care and nursing homes. • Even those who are qualified nurses have to retrain here and so have to take lower paid positions.

8. Other families work in the hotel and catering industry and a few more as cleaners, shop-assistants or motor mechanics. • All of the families are very industrious – working long hours for low pay. This makes it harder for them to settle in and help their children as they are so often at work – also in the evenings - and they are therefore often unable to attend parent evenings or to help with homework as well as not having the time or possibly money to take the children out at weekends or for holidays.

9. Most of the time the students take part in normal lessons with their English speaking peers. Support strategies used in class help them to access the curriculum and develop their English.

10. EAL Co-ordinator’s role • Initial meeting and assessment of newly arrived students • Informing staff of students’ backgrounds and their needs and advising on support strategies. • Working with and supporting the families. • Providing in class support/withdrawal for EAL learners as appropriate • Tracking the progress of EAL students • Facilitating the entry of heritage language GCSEs

11. EAL Co-ordinator’s role (continued) • Liaising with Hampshire Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service • Providing pastoral support and liaising with families and other agencies as appropriate • Raising the profile of and encouraging the celebration of the achievements of EAL students throughout the whole school • Promoting race equality across the school

12. International Club

14. ESOL class (English for Speakers of Other Languages) • Setting up and attending a weekly evening ESOL • course for students, families and the wider ethnic • minority community

18. Saturday morning Bengali Class • We run a Bengali class for second generation Bangladeshi children who speak their own language but do not read or write it well. We have around 12 children who attend, ranging in ages from 3 to 16 years!

19. The children are taught by a native speaker and will have the chance of taking Bengali GCSE when they are ready. At home they speak Sylheti dialect and not standard Bengali which is more academic. Even their home television channels are in Hindi.

20. Saturday morning Chinese Class We have just started a similar class for Chinese which runs at the same time (10 – 12) Unlike the Bengali class, there are also a lot of English learners (age range here 6 – 67!)

21. There is considerable interest because Mandarin has become such an important world language. The Chinese in the class speak Cantonese and so Mandarin is also new to them. Around 25 people attend. We were awarded a £3000 National Lottery ‘Awards for All’ grant to fund these 2 classes.

22. Hampshire Young Interpreter Scheme • In September a colleague from a school in Farnborough came to train a group of our EAL students together with Gifted and Talented MFL students to be school interpreters. This involved inviting in professional translators

23. To speak about their work as well as encouraging our EAL students to explore and examine how and when they use the different languages in their own repertoire. They will now help within school in various situations where somebody is needed to translate or interpret.

24. New Forest Diversity Network This has provided a good source of speakers for our ESOL group, and also a chance to work with people such as Sayem from Hampshire County Council on various joint projects. • Along with Sarah, I am a member of the above group which meets every 2 months and comprises representatives from various local services such as the council, police, the library, Forest Bus and others.

25. GCSE 2008 – 8 students • 5 A* - C passes 62.5% (73%) • 5 A* – C including English and Maths 50% (60.1%) 5 girls and 1 boy • 5 A* - G 100% (92.5%) (figure in brackets denotes whole school performance)

26. Short-term Future Aims • To use the school interpreters to help write and translate a termly school newsletter for EAL families and to involve older EAL children in helping more recent arrivals who speak the same language e.g. by translating exam papers etc. • To recruit a school governor from an ethnic minority background by April and appointing some EAL students onto the School Council. • To monitor and oversee the development of representation of cultural diversity in school.

27. To plan a Nepalese evening in school in conjunction with the Gurkhas in June.. • To work with the Diversity Network Sub-committee to plan a Forest Festival to celebrate cultural diversity this summer. • To assist Sayem to set up a drop-in group in New Milton for ethnic minority families. • To deliver racism unit to whole school in PHSE sessions. • Funding permitting, to plan some fun/educational excursions for EAL learners.