Free EAL Teaching Resources

The Bell Foundation offers a range of free resources to support EAL teaching and development within schools.

In January 2017, a free tool, the award-winning EAL Assessment Framework for Schools, was launched. The improved version of the Framework, published in 2019, is now accompanied by an interactive digital EAL Assessment Tracker and reporting tool.

This website offers a huge range of free advice and resources for the classroom to support learners with EAL. There is also information on online, blended, and face-to-face training courses, as well as free webinars. By developing the knowledge and skills of school staff the Foundation aims to improve the attainment of children who use EAL.

Our latest resources

A screenshot of one of the substitution tables from the resource. There are 4 columns (left to right) column one contains the text (with each word on a new line) 'The, The, The, A'. Column 2 contains the nouns 'family, war, guards, man'. Column 3 contains images to support understanding of the words in column 2. Column 4 contains the verbs 'live, starts, pack, leave, travel, arrive, stop, hide, look, helps, cross, look, watch'. Column 5 contains the phrases 'for the family. the city. at the seaside. in a car. in the country, the family crossing the border. their suitcases. the birds flying. at the border. in the forest. the family over the wall. the sea in a boat. travel on a train.' The items in the columns are intended to be sequenced to form sentences.

The Journey by Francesca Sanna (Part 3)

How does it feel to suddenly leave all that you know and travel far away to a new place with a new language and different ways to do things? What did the family travel in and what happened in the forest? Find out in this interactive and visual resource that follows the story of a mother and her two children who experience this.

image

New course: How to communicate with prisoners who use English as an Additional Language

For most prisoners, adjusting to the daily routine of prison life is no small thing. For someone who is new to English or in the early stages of English language learning, who may also be very far from home and potentially in a different country from their family and friends, the impact is even more profound.

image

Slough & Langley College: “Our ESOL curriculum is designed to get learners out of college”

Slough & Langley College, a finalist in the 2025/26 Beacon Award for Excellence in ESOL, supports adult learners of English to live and work in the UK thanks to its innovative, wraparound ESOL programme.

Paired reading

Guest blog: Growing EAL learners’ confidence through paired reading

For our next Practitioner Voices blog series, we hear from Alexandra Slater, EAL and Inclusion Manager at Meadow Park School and Marilena Richards, Advisory Teacher from Ethnic Minority Achievement Service (EMAS), Coventry City Council, about their new paired reading intervention to strengthen the literacy skills and confidence of EAL learners.