Teaching EAL learners means breaking language barriers, planning for wide language levels in the same room, and building a culturally welcoming classroom. This self-paced certificate, hosted by ISLA, gives international school teachers and leaders the practical skills, strategies and scripts that actually work, for students aged 8 to 15.
My class has students with zero to proficient levels of English, and I don't know where to start.
This is more common than you might think.
Teachers and leaders in international schools navigate enormous variation in language level, cultural background and curriculum demand, often in the same lesson. Without the right tools, that variation chips away at your confidence, drags down teaching quality, and slows student progress. This course is built to fix that.
If you teach, support or lead EAL in a school where English is the language of instruction but not the home language of most students, this is for you.
The course is built around the real situations you meet on a Monday morning. Mira, who arrived two months ago from Seoul with no English. Felix, who's been here three years and sounds fluent but freezes on a writing task. The whole-class lesson that has to work for both.
It works for class teachers, subject teachers, EAL specialists, learning-support staff, and the senior leaders responsible for the whole-school EAL strategy.
Every example, scaffold and case study is built around international school classrooms with students aged 8 to 15. No generic CPD repurposed from elsewhere.
Master translanguaging, scaffolding, and literacy enhancement, grounded in the work of Jim Cummins, Stephen Krashen and Merrill Swain.
Practical structures for authentic but controlled oracy. Students talk more, more meaningfully, without anyone being exposed.
Strategies that make rigorous reading accessible and that grow writing without flattening it. Vocabulary, fluency, modelling, feedback.
The things no one warns you about: the silent period, EAL/SEN overlap, behaviour, standardising your school's approach, parent communication.
Each module is built around concise videos you can watch on the commute, with downloadable resources you can take straight into class. Modules unlock in order so the curriculum builds on itself.
Meet your course mentor, Shane Leaning. Learn how to get the most out of the course. Take a pre-course confidence check to anchor where you're starting from.
The foundational theories of language acquisition that should shape every EAL classroom. Cummins on bilingualism, Krashen on language input, Swain on language output, and current research on translanguaging.
Plan lessons that are accessible without being dumbed down. Introduce new concepts, hand responsibility gradually to students, and set achievable language objectives. Practical translanguaging strategies throughout.
Build student participation in oracy. Use language structures, run collaborative activities, and bring home languages into the classroom in a way that strengthens rather than dilutes English acquisition.
Strategies that grow English reading: vocabulary depth, reading fluency, phonics where needed, and choosing high-quality texts. How to build a culture where EAL learners genuinely enjoy reading in English.
A teaching and learning cycle that develops real writers. Text modelling, shared writing, sentence-level scaffolds, and feedback that develops rather than crushes emerging writers. Includes ways to use classroom space as part of the writing process.
The realities no one warns you about. Behaviour management, supporting brand-new English learners, standardising EAL across the school, the relationship between EAL and SEN, and how to engage parents who may not speak English themselves.
Reflective practice and action planning. Further reading, resources and a personal plan that keeps your development going after the course closes.
Three things you do every week. Designed to fit around a real teaching timetable, not displace it.
Work through eight modules of concise, focused video lessons. Most are 5 to 15 minutes. Watch on the commute, before school, between meetings.
Try the strategies in your own classroom. Listen to the exclusive private course podcast on the move. Use the downloadable resources straight in your lessons. Deepen your knowledge with curated further reading.
Join the private LinkedIn group for EAL teachers and leaders. Compare what's working in your context with educators facing similar challenges in schools around the world. No new app to download, no new login to remember.
Shane is an organisational coach based in Shanghai. He has spent over a decade working with international schools on EAL provision, leadership development and organisational change, and is the co-author of Change Starts Here (Routledge, 2025).
This course brings together what he's learned from coaching EAL coordinators across more than thirty countries, the research from his own classroom teaching, and the practical playbooks he's developed for schools who'd outgrown one-off CPD.
You'll see and hear Shane in every module, alongside the downloadable resources, the private course podcast and the community.
For individual teachers, support staff and inclusion leaders. Your personal development journey, opening doors to teaching strategies that work for learners aged 8 to 15.
For coordinators, deputies and heads leading EAL across a whole school. Everything in the certificate, plus a leadership toolkit to help you set up and lead a successful EAL programme.
Group enrolments: schools can bulk-buy accounts for collaborative team development. Email for a tailored package. · Prefer an invoice? Email to request.