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EAL Department · Week 6 of 6

Week 6: Collaborate, review and plan next steps

Bring learner knowledge, task analysis and response evidence into a short conversation that leads to specific shared action.

Your guiding question

How will we keep responsibility shared and make the next step manageable?

Bring learner knowledge, task analysis and response evidence into a short conversation that leads to specific shared action.

Weekly outcome: A shared teaching agreement and a focused plan for the next six weeks.

Understand the idea

Bring evidence to the partnership.

Start a co-planning conversation with an upcoming subject task, a short learner response and one question. The EAL colleague brings language expertise and the subject colleague brings disciplinary knowledge; both contribute to goals, teaching and review.

Agree actions that can be seen.

“Support the EAL students” is too broad to guide a lesson. Name who will model the reasoning, rehearse the language, lead each phase, prepare the resource and collect the independent response. Confirm the arrangements with colleagues rather than allocating their work unilaterally.

Review change cautiously.

Compare your starting observation with recent evidence and the support available. Six weeks of activity is not proof that one strategy caused progress. Ask what became easier, what remains difficult and what else may have contributed. Choose a focused next cycle rather than adding many new targets.

Try it in a real lesson

  1. Select the most useful item from each week’s record and identify a small change in the learner’s participation or response.
  2. Hold a 15-minute conversation: learner evidence (3 minutes), upcoming task (4), teaching actions and resources (5), review arrangements (3).
  3. Agree a shared content goal, language focus, each teacher’s actions and one independent evidence check.
  4. Choose one professional-learning priority for the next six weeks. Include what you will try, with whom and when you will review it.

Fictional worked example

See the decisions in practice

Shared plan

Mai can now explain a balanced-force diagram with a brief checklist. The next task asks learners to reason about an unbalanced force. The subject teacher models the Science relationship; the EAL colleague models comparison and prediction language within that explanation.

During the lesson

Both teachers agree the phases and grouping. Each collects brief explanations from different learners, rather than assuming one teacher owns a fixed group. They compare independent responses after the lesson.

Next cycle

Continue with explaining changes using evidence. Reduce the checklist when the learner demonstrates control. Review another subject task with Mai so the team can investigate whether the language transfers across contexts.

Make your weekly record

Write a shared agreement: upcoming task; content goal; language focus; teacher actions; resource owner; evidence check; review date. Finish with one professional-learning priority for your next six-week cycle.

Reflect on what happened

  • What changed in the learner’s experience, not just my planning?
  • Which decision benefited from a colleague’s expertise?
  • What will I stop, continue or adapt in the next cycle?

Discuss with a colleague

Review all six weekly outcomes together. Name one established strength, one development priority and one source of ongoing support. Treat the completion checklist as a record of activity, not certification of expertise.

For the EAL colleague: Help turn the review into a sustainable departmental routine. Offer a bounded piece of modelling or co-planning and agree how the team will review it.

For the subject teacher: Bring the upcoming assessment and a learner response. Agree one teaching adjustment with your EAL colleague, including preparation and review time.

Pause and think

The EAL teacher is routinely asked to take a small group away without seeing the task or joining planning. What is a constructive first step?

Compare your thinking

Arrange a short task-and-evidence conversation to clarify the learning goal, language demand and purpose of the grouping. Agree shared preparation, roles and a way to reconnect learning. The appropriate arrangement depends on learner needs and the school context, not a fixed model.

Use these resources

Further reading: The Bell Foundation: partnership teaching and additional support ↗. This week’s sequence and examples are original EAL in Practice materials.

Your week 6 record

Plan, trial and reflect

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