As part of our campaign on the connection between EAL and wellbeing, we’re curating insights from educators worldwide with the aim to spark a discussion around EAL and belonging, social integration and assessment. Find out more about our work on EAL and wellbeing.
In this guest blog, Hollie O’Sullivan, Associate Assistant Headteacher – EAL and Reading at Fortis Academy, shares insights into how effective assessments can identify EAL learners’ needs, track progress and set achievable goals that motivate and support their overall wellbeing.
FlashAcademy®: How do you identify where your EAL students need support?
Hollie: FlashAcademy®’s assessment is how we baseline all learners who are newly arrived. This then enables us to tailor the support we offer by indicating which students would benefit from EAL intervention and which students require language immersion in mainstream (C and above). We then use this assessment six weeks later to track progress and organise transition.
The data from the assessment is fed into our EAL profiles. These are given to teachers across the school along with strategies to support each skill of the student’s development. For example, if a learner is developing competence in all areas except writing, we can scaffold the writing parts of our lessons accordingly.
The use of FlashAcademy® lessons in intervention session also creates a fun, engaging and competitive environment in the classroom and provides opportunities for teamwork and praise. It enables us to set a suitable homework activity during the earliest stage of proficiency, as learners can complete lessons independently and don’t require support from non-English speaking parents, it gets them into good routines of completing a weekly homework ready for mainstream.
FlashAcademy®: Why do you think clear goals have a positive impact on a student’s learning journey?
Hollie: Clear and realistic goals mean that students have a tangible and obtainable goal to aim towards. It is important that these goals be short-term rather than long-term. Each goal is scaffolded with steps to success or a success criteria, as well as modelled examples of what this looks like. This is important with both academic and emotional goals.
Problems occur when EAL students are set goals that go far into the future, e.g. “your goal is to write an essay”. This is unachievable today and so the student has a lack of motivation to try. If the first step to writing an essay was “today we are going to write a sentence, let me show you how”, this is more achievable and can be built on over time.
FlashAcademy®: Can you give an example of how you have noticed that the pressure to perform well in tests impacts your students’ mental health and wellbeing?
Hollie: Many EAL families come to England for the purpose of getting a better education for their children. With this comes the added pressure to perform well academically, from the very first day. This is an unrealistic goal and so it is the teacher’s responsibility to communicate this to parents and offer realistic timeframes for when they might start to see academic achievements in a British curriculum.
You can advise things that parents can do to support the process, such as 1:1 tutoring and speaking in English at home as much as possible. But no one is able to learn a new language overnight and the research suggests a timeframe of 7.2 years to become fully fluent.
It can also negatively affect younger EAL students when milestone assessments are not scaffolded for their needs.
FlashAcademy®: Can you give an example of how your students have reacted to poor test results?
Hollie: It can be really disheartening for students to receive poor results. This is worsened when schools provide unrealistic targets for them to achieve. I have seen pressure and disappointment negatively impact attendance and behaviour, which in turn becomes a vicious cycle for EAL learners (boys in particular) who will become demotivated if they feel they will not be successful.
Demotivation leads to distraction, which then leads to behaviour issues, leading to sanctions, leading to missed learning from consequences (isolation or suspension). Eventually the student will stop coming to school because they feel that they will never manage to catch up with what they have missed.
By stopping this cycle before it starts, we can promote success and achievement of all levels, and motivate students to continue. Remember that EAL learners are climbing a mountain that is twice as high as anyone else’s as they need to learn the content at the same time as learning the language.
For more information on the link between EAL and wellbeing, visit our webpage.
