Did you know we are an EAL/D Hub Champion School?

Our school is now an EAL/D (English as an Additional Language or Dialect) Hub Champion School? What does this mean we hear you ask?

As a whole school, all our staff are taking part in both face-to-face and online professional development to build our knowledge and capabilities in teaching students who do not speak Standard Australian English as their first language.

We have students and teachers from all over Australia and the world in our great school and many students and staff speak another dialect of English. American-English, Caribbean-English and Irish-English for example, are all highly recognisable dialects of English as we are exposed to them through platforms such as social media and film.

Many Indigenous people throughout Australia use ‘Aboriginal-English’. Aboriginal-English – like other dialects of English – is distinctive in its vocabulary, grammar and underlying concepts. That is why, we as a staff, are all participating in strengthening our knowledge of culture and best practice in EAL/D pedagogy, because as a culturally responsive school, we have a strong ethos based on respecting and valuing diversity.

As part of our commitment as a champion EAL/D school, we are introducing an exciting new initiative. Every week here at school the students are introduced to a new ‘word of the week’ in Standard Australian English (S.A.E). We thought we would extend this to also include Yawuru. Many words in S.A.E do not directly translate across to Yawuru, so instead, we decided to begin with a Yawuru word/phrase.

We have interpreted and translated a series of phrases into Kimberley Kriol, Aboriginal English and Torres Strait Islander Creole. When you are next at school please pop into the front office and have a look at our display. If you have a phone with a camera you will be able to scan the QR codes on the posters to hear someone from our school pronouncing these words and phrases.