At Dersingham, our vision is for all pupils and staff to ‘Be Excellent’. We welcome pupils at different entry points during their primary journey, many of whom do not have English as their first language. These pupils are all at different stages of acquiring English, some with little or no English. We strive to ensure that EAL learners arriving as  mid-phase admissions are assessed quickly, in order to make sure that their transition is smooth and their needs are met. We want our teachers to be proactive in removing barriers that stand in the way of our EAL pupils’ learning and success. As duty bearers, we need to meet our responsibilities to EAL pupils by ensuring equal access to the National Curriculum and the achievement of their educational potential. We want to provide our EAL pupils with a learning environment where they feel safe, accepted and valued in order to learn effectively and become successful members of society. Our key focus is to assist and support all EAL pupils in their acquisition of English language skills as quickly as possible.

At Dersingham, EAL lessons are delivered using a range of different strategies and resources.  Planning for EAL pupils incorporates both curriculum and EAL specific objectives. Staff regularly observe, assess and record information about pupils’ developing use of language. All of the EAL sessions have a focus on speaking and listening and are delivered in a welcoming and supportive environment using RWI phonics, Race to English, EAL Hub and Learning village resources. The learning village virtual programme is taught in a clear and progressive way, starting with basic survival language and progressing to more complex sentences, through the use of graphic organisers and sentence starters.

At Dersingham teachers adapt their lessons to make sure that all learners can access the learning at their level. This is further supported by using concrete resources , appropriate visuals and scaffolds. Teachers continue to involve  learners in activities where the language is challenging but appropriate to their ability and interest. This is done to ensure that they move out of their comfort zone and therefore their learning is ongoing. RWI phonics and Race to English interventions are delivered  out of the classroom. Teachers in KS1 use colourful semantics in reading and writing lessons which is a targeted approach to support children with their sentence building and to teach them about sentence structure. More visuals in the form of pictures and photographs are used to help learners make sense of new information.  At Dersingham we encourage the use of drama and role play  to make learning memorable and encourage empathy.