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Sheila Hopkins

The Bell Foundation

Sheila Hopkins has been with The Bell Foundation since 2020. She holds an MA in TESOL plus qualifications in primary education and EAL teaching.  She has worked as an EAL specialist in schools and as an EAL educator in initial teacher training and continued professional development courses at the university level in the United States. Her EAL work with The Bell Foundation focuses on initial teacher education, early career teachers and senior leaders.


Session Overview

EAL in ITE: Preparing trainee teachers for multilingual classrooms

With more than 20% of learners in our classrooms using English as an additional language, almost half of our teachers work in linguistically diverse classrooms, there’s an urgent need to prepare tomorrow’s teachers to meet the superdiverse and distinct learning needs of this group.

In this session, we will introduce training materials for ITT providers and guidance pieces for classroom practitioners, including guidance on SEND and EAL, and also working with learners who are refugees and asylum seekers.