What does Lalor Park Public School offer for my child who speaks another language at home?
Lalor Park Public School has a qualified teacher three days a week that supports students who have English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). The school provides support for these students who may need a little extra assistance with achieving required stage milestones or who may need their lessons differentiated to assist with accommodating to their learning abilities.
The EAL/D teacher uses assessments and communication with the classroom teacher to determine their highest area of need.
The process of the EAL/D program
Setting goals based upon the student's areas of need. If it is literacy; the following areas will be assessed:
- comprehension
- reading
- writing
- phonics
- phonemic awareness
- concepts of print
- vocabulary knowledge
- speaking
If it is numeracy; the following areas will be assessed:
- counting
- number
- pattern
- problem solving
Students who need extra help in mathematics will be supported with a program that replicates the classroom maths lesson. The EAL/D teacher uses a lot of concrete materials for the students to manipulate. Working with numbers is supported in a play based learning experience. The process of working with numbers and maths ideas is the key to learning and the EAL/D teacher supports this through lots of clarifying and what, how and why questions. This is necessary for student's to show their understanding.
Students who are new to learning English, will take 2 years to be able to communicate the same as their peers whilst using social speech. But it takes 7 years to speak at a similar ability as their peers with academic speech. Therefore, as much exposure to formal classroom vocabulary is highly encouraged to enhance the progress rate.