Individual Language Plan
Gaylene Price (gaylene.price@cce.ac.nz)
What is it?
Writing an individual language plan can
be one way for a school to monitor the progress of children from non-English-speaking
backgrounds. It works on a similar principle to an Individual Education Plan
for a special needs child. The language plan ensures that people committed
to the progress of non-English-speaking children meet and monitor development
and progress. It is likely that class teachers, ESOL support teachers and
any management team personnel responsible for this group of children, would
be involved.
How does it work?
The language plan has columns for recording
specific details about a child's progress.
- In the first column specific skills a child can achieve are recorded.
These may be specific skills related to reading, writing, speaking and listening
or to curriculum language and concepts. An assessment or classroom-based
task is a good source of data for gathering the information and for pinpointing
the skills of a child. During the assessment process, gaps in knowledge
will also become evident.
- These 'gaps' become the source of data listed in the second column and
the information on which next teaching steps are based.
- The form provides a column for prioritising the new teaching if this is
necessary. Strategies or resources to be used and identification of how
the learning will take place is developed during a team meeting following
the assessment of the child. These ideas are listed in the third column.
- More general comments are listed in the final two columns.
A follow-up review date for the plan is noted also.
What are the benefits?
There are significant benefits if a school team undertakes to record the
language learning of its ESOL learners in this way:
- it enables a school to track a child's progress over time so that teachers
have evidence of the changes and developments that occur.
- it provides direction for teaching. An ESOL support teacher or classroom
teacher can use the information to directly plan for the next learning steps.
- it provides a coordinated and coherent approach to meeting the specific
language needs of children new to learning English.
Download a
blank language plan
as an RTF file for your own use.
