My name is Fiona Ross and I am the English as an Additional Language advisory teacher for Blackhall Primary School.
I work in partnership with class teachers to help facilitate access to the mainstream curriculum for children who are learning English. I also work with the school to meet the needs of bilingual and minority ethnic learners in ways that are socially and educationally inclusive.
We are lucky at Blackhall to have such a wealth of languages and cultures represented in the school population.
If you have a child who is learning to speak English and you have any questions about how to support them, I am happy for you to contact me through the school office. I can arrange an interpreter if helpful.
Please find our information leaflet ‘Be Bilingual!’ which has advice and ideas that we recommend. There are also some useful links below which you may find interesting.
Thank you!
Fiona
WorldStories is a growing collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in many languages. Parents/carers can read the stories with their children. There is an English version of the stories so children can practise reading in English as well as in their home language.
This is a link to Aberdeen City EAL Service. It has fantastic advice about the importance of your home language and helping your child to be bilingual. It has key messages that we share with the parents/carers of developing bilingual children at our school.
We have further supports for specific languages from our EAL team. Below are the common words lists for the languages we currently have in our school.
Blackhall Primary School 