At Chatham Nursery School, we are proud to be recognised as both a Centre of Excellence for Inclusion and a School of Sanctuary. We actively celebrate the rich diversity that families bring to our nursery and are committed to supporting each family in a way that respects and values their unique backgrounds.

We understand that many children joining our setting may already be developing one or more languages and are now beginning to acquire English. We embrace this multilingual journey by offering extra space, time, patience, and support to these children. Their skills in their home language are acknowledged and celebrated, as we believe this recognition fosters confidence and strengthens self-esteem.
We reassure parents that maintaining and developing their child’s home language is not only beneficial but essential. We encourage families to engage in meaningful interactions in their home language, knowing this supports their child’s overall development.

What does EAL learner mean? 

Child is exposed to a language at home that isn’t English, it isn’t about proficiency in English.  

We recognise that “EAL” as a group are superdiverse with different strengths, needs, families from different ethnic minorities, children of refugees and asylum seekers, children of migrants, and with different socio-cultural backgrounds.

 

What determines whether EAL learners do well? 

  • Whether child has had any prior experience with English  
  • Attendance  
  • Life experiences 
  • What their first language is  
  • Family life 
  • Past experiences  

 

 Inclusive pedagogy within Chatham Nursery School 

Reflected in both our Mission Statement and Chatham Values:

  1. Linguistic inclusion: we use language that acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences and promotes equal opportunities. 
  1. Social inclusion: we do our best to ensure opportunities for the children to learn, make friendships and have a voice. 
  1. Teachers’ inclusive attitudes: our staff think about ways they can promote social and academic inclusion – resources, curriculum plans, displays, environment, routine, promoting parental engagement 
  1. Academic inclusion: we plan for linguistic progression, small group  sessions focused on phonics, wellcomm activities and maths that are very clear, using instructions that cut out extraneous language, explaining what words are, and scaffolding language acquisition. 

 

  Ways we engage with EAL learners and their families: 

  • Visuals 
  • Focus on spoken language  
  • Learning through play 
  • Shared reading
  • Opportunities for physical activity to develop balance, coordination, proprioception, and develop sensory awareness and integration. 
  • Learning through songs and stories 
  • Real experiences (trips & visitors) 
  • Routine & repetition  
  • Small group language/phonics/maths groups 
  • Games 
  • Opportunities for mark making 
  • Social buddies 
  • Involving parents 
  • Planning for individual needs 
  • Making referrals to speech and language 
  • WELLCOMM 
  • NELI
  • SHREC Approach
  • Family Book Club & Home library 

 

Supporting children at home 

  • A child’s first language provides the roots to learn additional languages, and parents should continue to use their home languages to strengthen and support their children’s language proficiency as they join new environments. 
  • Borrow a bilingual book from nursery to share together at home 
  • Oxford Owl free eBook library: Many (if not all) of the books have audio to accompany the reading. 

 

At Chatham we use track children’s progress in English-language proficiency using our assessment tracker, adapted from The Bell Foundation’s Primary EAL Assessment Framework.

Which can be found here: Chatham EAL Assessment Tracker

English language Proficiency development at Chatham is represented by two proficiency bands and each band has a descriptive label :

A-New to English/Beginning
B-Early acquisition/Emerging

Each band has 10 assessment descriptors. Children are not expected to achieve all the descriptors within a band (some may not be applicable to certain ages, for example) and pupils may attain the descriptors in a different order to those listed; this is not unusual and is not a cause for concern. However, it is important to be aware that the descriptors are sequenced to reflect internal progression within each band of descriptors, e.g. descriptors 1- 3 are ‘early development’ and descriptors 8 -10 are ‘getting closer to the next band’. Although the descriptors are not expected to be achieved in strict order by all pupils, this way of ordering the descriptors within each band enables teachers to set targets from the descriptors and to track progression.