Welcome to Year 2...

If I don't learn to differentiate this year, it's a fairly safe bet that I NEVER WILL. As well as starting the second year of teacher training, which I'll be converting to a PGCE, I hope, I've got two new teaching gigs, working with mums (it's ALL women) at two primary schools who don't have English as their first language.

I expect to spend a lot of time telling people not to speak Bengali, as 98% of the population here is from Bangladesh.

At one school, ALL the women in my classes are Bengali, which of course presents me with the new challenge of a monolingual class.

At the other school there's a better mix, which bodes well for making them speak English.

However, the real challenge this year is going to be the varying abilities of my groups. In the Entry 1 class, some of the women can read quite well, and know a bit of vocabulary, but some of them can barely speak, let alone read, English. Luckily for me, I have two colleagues at my college who both have lots of experience of combining ESOL with literacy.

Another class has people some of whom are transitioning from Entry 1 to Entry 2, who need their other E1 modes strengthening, and some of whom have already done E1 reading. Fortunately I don't have to decide *just* yet what exam I'm aiming for with them.

I'm less worried about my Entry 2/3 class, as I've combined the two levels before and they work well together.

But yes. Differentiation is King of the Academic Year 2007-2008.