English as an Additional Language (EAL)
"The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people." Unknown
"In diversity there is beauty and there is strength." Maya Angelou
Walliscote Primary School is a multicultural school. 60% of our children come from different countries and heritages from around the world and have EAL and a wide range of backgrounds. The Department for Education defines a English as an Additional language children as: "A pupil is recorded as having English as an additional language if she/he is exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English” (English proficiency of pupils with English as an Additional Language, Feb 2020).
We recognise that pupils need to feel safe, accepted and valued in order to learn and that for EAL children their home language, background needs to be recognised and valued. Our intention is to settle children into school life as quickly and as comfortably as we can. We intend to provide them with the support that they need to get the best out of their school experience and make quick progress. We strive to celebrate all languages and cultures.
We strongly believe that children continue to use and develop their native language alongside English, being bilingual is a superpower because the more languages you know, the more open and adaptable to the world and its diversity you are.
Support for our families
Please find guidance for parents/carers who use English as an additional language and how to help your child:
| English | Arabic | Bengali | Bulgarian |
| Gujarati | Italian | Latvian | |
| Polish | Punjabi | Romanian | |
| Slovak | Somali | Spanish | |
| Urdu | Ukrainian | Dari | |
| Arabic | Bengali | Bulgarian | |
| Gujarati | Italian | Latvian | |
| Polish | Punjabi | Romanian | |
| Slovak | Somali | Spanish | |
| Urdu |
EAL online support for parent/carers at home to use with children:
https://www.gamestolearnenglish.com/
This is a great web site to practice English in an engaging and fun way.
Have a go!
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/
This website gives your child the opportunity to learn and speak English more fluently.
Sign up and have a go at the listen and watch, speak and spell and fun and games sections.
https://worldstories.org.uk/
This is a fantastic site where you can share stories written in lots of different languages.
You can:
Write a short summary of the story.
Draw the main characters and write a description of them.
Look for unfamiliar words and look them up in a dictionary or discuss them with your family.
Write a similar story using the main character.
Read the story aloud using expression.
Finally some more useful resources from Better Bilingual. They have lots of home-language resources, such as this maths worksheet in Urdu.
