Burrendah Primary School has a culturally and linguistically diverse school community. There are over 44 different languages spoken by our students and their families. We are fortunate to have this diversity at our school. This enables our students to be culturally aware from a young age. We encourage families to continue to use their home language as our students develop their English language proficiency.
Each year, we receive many students that are only beginning to learn through English. Our school provides comprehensive English support for students who are new to the country or were born in Australian but speak a language other than English at home. The program caters for students from Pre-Primary to Year 6, with a focus on oral and written competence in Standard Australian English.
Burrendah Primary is fortunate to have a small team of EALD (English as an Additional Language) teachers and teacher assistants available to work with these students in collaboration with classroom teachers. Their purpose is to ensure that our EALD students can access the curriculum in order to reach their full potential.
Support is delivered in a variety of ways: in class support, small group withdrawal or 1:1 support when required. We have a wide variety of resources that can be borrowed by our students and parents to practise their English skills at home.
All new arrivals to Australia will need to be screened by EALD staff before enrolment is accepted into the school. At times newly arrived students need to be referred to the Intensive English Centre (IEC) at Beaconsfield Primary School. The IEC delivers specialised instruction in smaller class sizes in order to best support students’ English language learning. Students exiting the program at the IEC after 12 months are better prepared to cope in main-stream classrooms.
At Burrendah, we also support parents of our EALD students, enabling them to fully engage in their child’s education within their new school community. We run informal EAL/D Parent Network meetings three times per term; During these sessions, we learn from each other and support one another.
We encourage all parents to participate as leaders in learning through our “culture club’ program as well as our cultural celebrations.” Parents are our best resources when it comes to sharing information on culture and language.
EALD Program Flyer - please click HERE
Useful websites:
