‘Since the dawn of man there has been a desire to communicate language through imagery, actions, music and words. Learning vocabulary and languages is not only learning different words for the same things but learning another way to think about things and viewing life from a different perspective.’ (Sims, 2019)
At Bluecoat Primary Academy we celebrate culture and linguistic diversity, seeing this as a step on the ladder to success.
It is our mission to spark the passion for learning English. To immerse our pupils into an engaging, English enriched environment throughout the curriculum; to inspire our pupil’s to be all they can be.
A Bluecoat Primary Academy at bilingual child will:
✔ Reflect the linguistic and cultural characters of their community.
✔ Embrace and share their culture and language.
✔ Overcome their language barrier through being resilient and intrigued by the English world around them.
✔ Take ownership of their ‘learning English journey’ in order to grow and blossom linguistically.
✔ Be able to communicate fluently with cohesion.
✔ Be able to identify errors in their speech and understanding, and use them as a learning opportunity.
✔ Practise and apply their English skills at home encouraging family engagement and learning.
✔ Push their limits and be resilient no matter how challenging the linguistic skill is.
EAL Intent
For all of our bilingual children to be performing alongside their native speaking peers by the time they reach Year 6. However, English is a complex language that our children need to learn quickly in order to diminish their language barrier and become an independent learner. Our children need to be taught, and modelled too, of how to use their environments to succeed, not just academically but for personal development as well. We need to immerse our children into English enriched environments where their linguistic skills can flourish; allowing them to push their limits by being unusually brave to discover what is possible.
We are proud to have literacy enriched environments that support our EAL children learning survival, social, functional and academic language. These skills are learnt through quality first teaching and personalised learning through a wide range of real-life and engaging activities.
Here are some useful websites with awesome free resources:
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/english-as-an-additional-language-eal
https://breakingnewsenglish.com/
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
http://www.literacycenter.net/
http://literactive.com/Home/index.asp
https://www.highlightskids.com/
Don’t forget to check out our The BPA Way: English as an Additional Language Framework. which contains further details regarding our approach to supporting EAL Learners within our school.
