Ethnic Minority Achievement
New Arrivals Excellence Programme
This year one of the National Strategies has been piloted in some schools around the country. We, at READS, have adapted this New Arrivals Excellence Programme to implement in our secondary schools. St.PeterŐs High School kindly agreed to trial this for us and since half term we have been working with EAL coordinators in the school and also English, Maths and Science Departments. There have been many meetings, a great deal of preparation and an abundance of differentiation BUT ... has it been worthwhile?
Well, today we held our first presentation to the English Department and other interested members of the school. The room was packed with people and the response was very favourable. We were able to demonstrate differentiation for initial intensive English, practical outcomes with photos of our visit to Gloucester sites, and English specific requests on sentence structure, descriptive writing, writing for various audiences etc. The Head, Larry Montague and the Chair of Governors came along to see the work. It is really good to have everyone in the school actively involved. The EAL pupils have prepared individual evaluations ('Pupil Voice' response) and we now look forward to the next two weeks of intensive EAL Science.
We are extremely grateful to all staff involved, to our READS staff and, of course, to the students themselves.
We know we can do this and do it well! We will modify parts, extend other aspects and, hopefully introduce this to other interested secondary schools in the county.
Dee Russell-Thomas
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