EAL at Britannia

At Britannia Primary School, we are proud of the diversity and languages of our school community. It is important for us to cherish and celebrate each individual language and what we can learn from it. We are lucky to have links to 20 different countries and 25 different languages through our children. We want our EAL pupils to feel welcomed from the moment they arrive. This is created by the warmth of our languages display in the entrance of our school. 

Who are EAL children?

EAL stands for English as an Additional Language. It is an acronym used to describe the teaching of English where it is not a child's first language. The Department for Education (DfE) defines ‘first language’ as 'The language to which a child was initially exposed during early development and continues to be exposed in the home or in the community'. It is to be encouraged that parents continue to expose their children to their home language in their home environment. 

How are EAL pupils supported at Britannia?

At Britannia, EAL pupils are provided with scaffolded resources e.g. sentence frames and visual aids to help EAL pupils to become independent learners. It is encouraged that EAL pupils learn new vocabulary via pre-teaching to allow them to access new learning and vocabulary in context. EAL pupils are assessed using the five English proficiency bands and are assessed against the 4 areas: speaking, listening, reading and writing. 

Young Interpreters Scheme

The Young Interpreter Scheme® provides peer support to pupils who are learning English as an Additional Language. This benefit pupils who are new to English and EAL pupils who need support with their English. 

What is it?

The Young Interpreter Scheme offers training for learners aged 5-16 to develop the skills needed to help new arrivals with English as an Additional Language feel welcome and settled in their new school environment. The scheme also develops the confidence, communication and leadership skills of the Young Interpreters. For schools it’s a way of celebrating diversity and multilingualism.

Who are Young Interpreters?

Making the scheme available to both bilingual and monolingual learners is very powerful in developing empathy amongst English speakers towards some of the challenges and difficulties that pupils new to English may be facing. Therefore, Young Interpreters can be speakers of English only or speakers of other languages. 

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