EAL in Pentre’r Graig Primary

At Pentre’r Graig, we provide a caring, secure and enjoyable learning environment to which all stakeholders are proud to belong. We welcome families from a wealth of different cultures, languages and backgrounds and we greatly value the rich diversity which that brings to our school community.

Linguistic landscape of our school

We currently have 17 percent of pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL). There are 18 different languages spoken altogether. We place a huge emphasis on wellbeing and we aim to ensure that we meet all the needs of the children who are EAL learners in our school.  Our aim is to help pupils become confident and fluent in speaking, listening, reading and writing in the English language in order to fulfil their academic potential across the Curriculum.

Assessment, Monitoring and Provision

During their time at our school, our EAL learners are closely monitored for their progress in the curriculum and their acquisition of English.

We use information from The Bell Foundation Assessment framework to track each pupil’s individual progress. This information subsequently informs the EAL target of next steps to work on and the relevant support which is needed in order to achieve that.

We provide relevant support such as the use of visuals and scaffolding resources to enable access to curriculum content. We use diverse teaching strategies, such as collaborative learning where talk is central to the learning and use of the home language, in which to explore new concepts and vocabulary introduced. We provide support to boost vocabulary and communication as required.

We have a variety of translated resources across school to support our pupils, including bilingual books, multi- language dictionaries and PENpals talking pens which translate books and other resources into numerous different languages.

Parental Liaison

  In order to help our newly arrived families settle into school life in Pentre’r Graig, an initial meeting is arranged, where we collect important information on language background, to form a language profile. These are then used as reference points for our teachers, to enable them to make decisions on how best to provide for the needs of the EAL learners in their class.

  We greatly value parents as partners in the educational process and during the initial meeting, tips on how to support their children’s learning are discussed and shared. Furthermore, parents are signposted to useful resources and websites they can use, to aid learning for their children.

Language of the Month

The idea of language of the month is to have fun celebrating and valuing the variety of languages and cultures of the children in our school. Each month we have a whole school assembly, where we celebrate and learn about a specific language, country and culture. The children who speak that language are called “our experts” and they assist us in learning three to five phrases of the focus language. We warmly welcome any involvement from parents and families and encourage them to get involved, however big or small the contribution.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you require further information regarding our provision for pupils learning English as an Additional Language (EAL).

Our EAL Co-ordinator is Ms A. Bielby

BielbyA1@Hwbcymru.net