Meeting the needs of students for whom English is an Additional Language or Dialect
At East Kenwick Primary School we aim to support and assist our EAL/D students to gain proficiency in reading, speaking and writing English. Our classroom and specialist teachers offer students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, programs to improve their reading comprehension, language conventions, writing, and oral language and vocabulary acquisition.
Our EAL/D coordinator and specialist teacher, Zelda Mitchell, supports and works collaboratively with school staff in the planning, implementation and evaluation of appropriate programs within the school environment. Depending on the varying needs of our EAL/D cohort, this support may be include: whole class support, small group intervention and direct individual instruction.
Intensive instruction
Some of our EAL/D students are new arrivals to Australia. It then becomes the responsibility of the classroom teacher and EAL/D coordinator to assess a new student's English proficiency. If this student requires specialist intensive English language tuition, then they may be referred to an Intensive English Centre (IEC). Our local IEC is Thornlie IEC. Once a student attains a certain level of English acquisition, they will then return to East Kenwick Primary School to continue their education.
We currently run a Language Lift Oral Language program for the K-2 students. This program is run by our EA, Mrs Simmi Sood, who does the initial testing of students, delivers the small group intervention and does the final assessment for each student also. This early invention has proven to be a success with lifting English language acquisition for our young EAL/D students.
Another way East Kenwick endeavours to support our EAL/D families is by continuing to use various interpreting services. This service may assist our parents during the enrolment process, teacher interviews and meetings, incursion/excursion information and whenever information needs to be passed on from school to home. The EAL/D coordinator is the link between school and home at East Kenwick.
Embracing our cultural diversity within the community
In 2023 we decided to trial an EAL/D Playgroup to gauge the interest of our EAL/D community in a preschool program. In term 4 we held this playgroup, run by Mrs Sood in our Community Room. We were very fortunate to have 10 families join us. Their feedback was very positive and showed that there was definitely an interest for this to continue. We hope to offer more sessions in 2024 as interest and needs continue.
Harmony Day is always well received at East Kenwick Primary School. We celebrated and embraced our cultural diversity with an evening picnic and concert night on March 29th on our school grounds. We invited families to join us in sharing their cultural food. Staff, students and families wore cultural dress or orange, to embrace the Harmony Day theme of, “Everyone Belongs.” The evening was a great success. We look forward to continuing this tradition in 2024 as our cultural diversity continues to grow in our community.
Please click on the link to watch a video of highlights from 2023 and Harmony celebrations 'Everyone Belongs' 2024 photo album.