Teaching Bilingual Pupils

This page contains useful tips, resources and links for teaching bilingual pupils in primary schools.

Resources for teachers working with pupils with EAL during school closures. From the Bell Foundation.

Guide for Class Teachers (669 downloads) 10 point Guide from Aberdeen City EAL Service

The Importance of Names (560 downloads) 10 point Guide from Aberdeen City EAL Service

Suggestions for Supporting EAL Pupils in Class (346 downloads)

Support Strategies for Primary EAL pupils from ASL Service Edinburgh support-strategies-booklet-primary.pdf (149 downloads)

Education Scotland – information about teaching EAL pupils

Teaching Bilinguals Leaflet from Bilingualism Matters, University of Edinburgh School of Philosophy, Psychology and Languages Sciences.

Eal Strategies – This website, authored by a former EAL teacher from the London Borough of Brent, contains a wealth of resources to be used by teachers to support EAL pupils. The author has also delivered training and worked with leadership to develop action plans for whole school development.

Information and resources from NALDIC, the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum and the national subject association for EAL.

EAL guidance from NALDIC and others to help you with teaching EAL and bilingual learners
FAQS Podcasts from NALDIC “covering typical questions related to catering for the needs of EAL learners.”
Resources and articles to support teaching English to primary and secondary EAL learners
Why get EAL learners to write in their first language if I can’t read and understand it? On this page you can find a podcast from NALDIC which discusses this question.

Language Features and Factsheets – These factsheets give information about many different languages e.g.” the number of letters in the alphabet,and common language mistakes from the Home Language which some pupils transfer when speaking, listening, reading and writing English. They include the main grammatical structures that often present difficulty and ideas on how to correct them.” Produced by Education Support for Northern Ireland

Oxford Reading Tree – Key stage words with visuals. Useful for flashcards and sentence building. (from Highland EAL Service)