A reflection on the strategies which support the progress of an EAL child, following discussions with mentor and school’s English lead. There is a child in the class which has only been in England for a few months and so his use of English is limited. Through discussion with my mentor, this child often completes separate tasks or requires personalised scaffolds to aid learning. This is often to practise writing, reading and speaking simple sentences or words. I have not had to plan before for a child with such different needs to the rest of the class with regards to translation and depth of understanding. I have been mindful of the implications of the child feeling they are doing a seperate tasks because this can lose chances for them to hear and learn from peers using the English language. Therefore, I have been keen to plan scaffolds for him which allow him to still be involved in the task. I felt nervous however, that even though he was learning with his peers, would he be able to complete the same task as his peers even if scaffolded (eg a diary entry)? I discussed with my mentor and the English lead, ideas I had for the child to remain involved in the class task such as giving word banks of words in both languages, print the LO and task in his native language as well as English, pairing him with a child who is interested in helping to translate through the Ipad. My mentor and English lead were pleased with my ideas and were happy for me to use them, along with other recommendations such as Cloze Procedure sentences, ‘fill in the blanks’ sentences and using images for him to label. I set out to plan such strategies for a series of English lessons on diary writing. When it came to the lessons, he was pleased to see translations, and immediately set to task using the word banks. Adult support was deployed too by myself to ensure he was being assisted. I involved him in the group work which he contributed to well with assistance too from his peer support. Next lesson, I did plan for his task to be different as a diary would not have been a suitable goal for him. Instead I planned a sequence of images for him to order then label. Then as an extension to write the labelled words in sentences. Overall, I felt then that his involvement with the lesson’s topic was maintained but suited his needs. He produced clear work and through using the Ipad to translate, demonstrated imaginative word choices. He also used his reading book to reference as he remembered English words suitable to be used in his sentences. To further improve I will continue to differentiate his work through the methods I have discussed. This allows him to still remain involved in the class lesson rather than doing a separate task- a benefit of this is that he is constantly listening to his peers speaking in English. The range of tasks I can then set which link to the topic of the lesson is an area I will look into so that his tasks are varied. I will do this through research on the internet and further discussions with my mentor and English lead. I appreciate their remarks that he will not be able to always do the same task as the other children and I will look to assess this myself further when planning. By him having his own task he can work towards more ‘bitesize’ goals for his capabilities. All Stories