10 ways to support EAL and SEND students in the business classroom.

I was going to write two different blogs, but often we need to consider SEND and EAL students in all of our teaching. So here they are together, I promise this will make sense in the end. I really hope here to give you some practical ways to support your students. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to really showcase how Revisionstation’s business teaching resources can be used to support your SEND and EAL students at GCSE and A level, so bear with me.

Supporting SEND students in the business classroom

1. Chunked information – meet individual learning needs by breaking up information into smaller parts. Why?

• Improves memory and retention, students can process the business theory and it reduces cognitive overload. Think about a time you have sat in a long training session where the information was coming at you thick and fast. I attended a 3 hour session once on the Teacher's Pension. I was exhausted at the end and I could not recall most of what was said.

• If we chunk lessons it allows some of the more complex topics (like ARR) to be simplified into clear logical steps, and helps students to engage with the content rather than just passively listening to us blether on at the front. Again I try and think of CPD where I have not been involved and where it has just been a "listen to this" exercise. I found the experience unnecessarily draining.

3. Clear objectives are given at the start of every lesson, with clear slide section headers. These objective slides help to reduce anxiety at the start of the lesson. As they are on every PowerPoint in a pack (80 in the A level and around 30 in the GCSE) students quickly become comfortable with this system. I hate any meeting where there is no agenda or training where the objectives are not set out at the beginning so I make sure that students have them for the lessons.

4. Scaffolding – bullets on slides break all the information down into simple small bites of information, easier to understand. Nobody wants to read a slide with 300 words on it. There are lots of fun websites devoted to the worst PowerPoints of all time and many are overloaded with text.

5. Opportunities to consolidate – lots of verbal questions for teachers to use on slides to check understanding. Can be used with mini white boards to check a whole class, or to cold call individual targeted questions.

Supporting EAL students in the business classroom

Students that are EAL are speaking English as an additional language. I have lots of students that seamlessly slip into another language when chatting to classmates or staff. I am always envious of this ability to fluently speak two languages, my rudimentary French is, quite frankly, embarrassing. Some students speak multiple languages and I always try and make it clear to them that this is a valuable skill that they should put on their CV. However, occasionally this may mean that students only have the basics and will need more support with the business terms and technical language. So here are a few ideas:

1. Definitions – break key language down with definitions to underpin business theory

2. Simplified language – used on slides and worksheets. Where possible the language has been simplified so that it engages students (not putting them off with lots of jargon) and keeps them hooked into the lesson.

3. Gap fill of keywords on worksheets, a great way to engage students in the lesson. Anything that is interactive is more enjoyable, and we want students to have a great time learning our fabulous subject. Business terms are learnt in context which hopefully will help with application and retention. That's the theory. I love to see 28 heads bob down when they come to a gap they need to fill in. More time engaged is less time to be distracted.

4. Opportunities for group work to allow students to verbally practice using the key terms. This gives students the opportunity to practice their conversational English. Listening to their group (peers) speaking fluent English can also help pronunciation. Small group work is less risky for EAL students than speaking in front of the whole class and they get to take some responsible risks with their thinking, application, analysis and problem solving.

5. Students can build up a glossary of key terms

This blog has been written by Sarah Hilton. Sarah has been a business teacher for 25 years and is a current GCSE and A level business examiner. She splits her time between teaching at an outstanding college and training business teachers.