I not too long ago shared an instance unit of labor from our EAL syllabus. Right here some additional perception into the long-term and medium-term planning for our syllabus.
We’re solely within the second yr of organising our provision. Yr 1 was all-hands-on-deck for useful resource planning. Our focus was on creating useful, well-structured, student-facing assets resulting in clear outcomes. It wasn’t on writing planning docs. Certain, the 2 ought to have gone hand in hand (in a great world). However contemplate this:
⁃ There was me and one different trainer to plan six bespoke models of labor from scratch for annually group (KS3 and KS4, however the latter was exam-based so a tad completely different).
⁃ The opposite trainer was new to EAL. They wanted time to settle in, study numerous instruments and approaches, construct belief within the course of… they didn’t should be caught at a desk writing planning docs at that stage.
Yr 1 was about creating new practices, Yr 2 is about consolidating them. It’s time to shore up the planning. New lecturers are coming in and I want to go away the dept with clear steering to work with. Plus, an ISQM accreditation is impending, so we have to make our dept practices/processes clearer.
I shared a parent-facing curriculum overview on this earlier publish. Our long-term planning doc appears to be like completely different…
When you’re aware of the Bell Framework, you’ll see that Band C is shared firstly of our curriculum doc. You might not have seen the framework utilized in such a approach, I get that. It’s meant as a doc for accessing learners in mainstream courses, not for bespoke programmes. And it’s not meant to be a linear instrument – you’re prone to train learners with jagged profiles whose ‘4 abilities’ fluctuate throughout the Bands significantly.
Nonetheless, it’s one of many few EAL-specific evaluation frameworks obtainable, and we want a benchmark. We’ve obtained learners becoming a member of us mid-year which can be at Band C, learners with us for some time nonetheless working in the direction of Band C, and a few already past it. We constructed our EAL syllabus at Yr 7-9 in the direction of Band C descriptors at least, but assume (and plan for) assist/stretch round that.
Does this show excessive expectations? Effectively, on paper possibly not. In follow, given our pupil demographic and the way we stretch and problem inside classes, sure. Band C offers us a baseline goal and a hook for planning.
As I’ve talked about, Bell descriptors and alternatives to evaluate are weaved into every of our models. Throughout any unit there are alternatives to watch and assess abilities associated to an entire vary of descriptors throughout Bands B-D. Nonetheless, there are positively stand-out descriptors that we deal with in a unit, as there are stand-out foci on grammar and vocabulary.
What’s value noting from a extra ‘ELT’ perspective is that any deal with grammar, and it’s not often an express focus, isn’t ‘leveled’. Our grammar protection is on the level of want and associated to the content material taught, it’s not a case of working by means of sure grammar factors related to sure ‘ranges’ of studying. We do stage take a look at in a CEFR approach on the finish of the yr simply to appease numerous stakeholders to be trustworthy, however I’m fairly forgiving on accuracy after I assess that – and weighted extra in the direction of communication, improvement of concepts, vocabulary, and so forth.
The long-term plan ends like this…
We have to spend time serving to learners evaluation subject-specific content material. Bell evaluation comes into its personal then for certain. And, whereas we don’t have PSHE classes per se, there are themes that I really feel we hyperlink to on that entrance.
What do our medium-term plans seem like? We’re within the presence of making our planning docs for every unit. I created two variations of a unit plan for the primary unit listed above. The primary appears to be like like this:
Nonetheless, I made a decision to simplify issues a bit. There’s a lot of duplicate information (hyperlink evaluation stuff) that I might simply hyperlink to as an alternative, and in the course of the course of I did begin to suppose ‘Pete, you’re on an 80% timetable as a HoD. How are you going to seek out time to write down 20 or so of those?’ So, I settled on…
I wished to stress ‘duties’ within the planning. That is due to our division focus:
By itemizing a predominant process, I might rapidly look at our planning doc to see the extent to which the duties lined had been ‘real-world’. They didn’t need to be for each lesson/week, however we would have liked a good quantity of purposeful, significant, real-world utility of language – not simply all pedagogical duties.
Going again to the place we began, the student-facing assets, I discussed on this publish how we then hyperlink the Bell targets to that too:
The lacking hyperlink is now serving to learners to raised perceive the evaluation targets.
Oh man. Having written all this down, I’m now pondering that studying about our processes might be fairly boring! HOWEVER, after my final EAL-related publish that went blow-by-blow by means of an EAL unit of labor, somebody stated it was tremendous helpful to learn. I really feel like there are loads of us which can be having to create these bespoke syllabi, accelerated programmes, intensive programs, and so forth, which can be in all probability pondering ‘am I alone right here?’. So, no, you’re not. And I can fortunately share our uncooked processes right here to reassure you that we’re all attempting to work issues out in our personal approach! Haha.
Be happy to get involved should you’re after concepts for long- and medium-term EALing – me and my colleague Becky can be glad to assist.
Classes: Normal, reflections