Teaching Strategies to Support EAL / ESL Students in the Mainstream Classroom

Teaching Strategies to support EAL / ESL Students in the Mainstream Classroom

Many classes in both International schools, Private schools and State schools will include students with a range of abilities in the English language. In order to help teachers meet this challenge and differentiate classroom activities, I created the document below to support them in their teaching of English as an Additional Language (EAL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the mainstream classroom.

The teaching strategies in the document are designed to be cross curricular and are able to be transferred across a wide range of subject areas and come from my experiences of teaching the Middle Years Programme and the Diploma Programme in the International Baccalaureate as well as Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 in England.

The document helps teachers in both the planning and delivery of lessons and shows eight different sets of classroom activities used to support EAL and ESL students in the mainstream classroom.

Each set of activities starts with an explanation of the techniques used, explaining how they can help second language learners. The examples shown in this document can be transferred to a wide range of subjects and age groups and are not just for ESL students but as the techniques can also be used to support differentiation for students who require extra support.

I have used this document when I have worked with English Department to lead one of the language workshops highlighting the fact that every teacher is an English teacher.