Happy new (teaching) year, everyone. I hope it’s going to be a good one.
This is an update to my ‘end-of-year’ post about the launch of Starting Tabletop English and Tabletop English. These are two sets of fun, interactive, group games and activities for pre-beginner and early beginner learners of English. They were written and trialled through 2024.. It was a huge project, and it’s exciting to have it ready now.
Supporting a diverse learner group…
Beginner learners come with very different backgrounds and learning histories. They might be pre-beginners who have just moved up from the Course in Initial EAL (or another ‘ABC’ class), able to say a few phrases and read a few words. They might have been using spoken English for some years, but now want to come to grips with reading and writing in English. They might have learned to read and copy some English, but have never been exposed to natural spoken English – and feel overwhelmed when someone speaks to them and expects a reply.
The lovely part of teaching a diverse group like this is that there’s often the chance for peer support from more confident learners. I’m not talking about grammar explanations here, but the likelihood that someone in a small group will know a word that perplexes the others, or be able to look it up and explain it.

Group work and the teaching week
The Tabletop activities give learners the chance to support each other while they use their newly acquired language, listen, interact, take the initiative, read together, work things out, do a little joint writing and peer dictation. While I didn’t create the activities as part of a set course, teachers asked if I could map to the units they’re teaching. They also asked for some topic mapping, so that they could fit activities into different teaching themes.
So, for anyone here in Australia teaching the new (2024-2028) EAL Frameworks from the Victorian Government, here are my best attempts to map the Starting Tabletop and Tabletop activities to a number of Settlement topics, and to what we call ‘Course’ and ‘EAL 1’ – those are 22637VIC: Course in EAL and 22638VIC Certificate I in EAL (Access).
As you’ll see, some units don’t have many activities mapped to them (especially writing), as the Tabletop activities are interactive. I’ve offered suggestions for additional activities you could create yourself.
Apologies to those using CSWE, CGEA, a schools-based EAL/D curriculum, an informal program, or a program from elsewhere, but I hope that this mapping will still give you some ideas. (Also a disclaimer – of course I don’t claim any connection to – or approval from – the Victorian Government, or the Framework writers.) Finally, as always, if there are things that don’t look right to you, please get in touch! Email address: info AT thebooknextdoor DOT com
Mapping Starting Tabletop English and Tabletop English to Course in EAL

Course in EAL is for pre-beginners (for those outside Australia, there’s also an earlier ‘letters and numbers’ Course in Initial EAL). These ‘Course learners’ inspired Tabletop English – but then trialling showed it was a little challenging for some of them, hence the development of Starting Tabletop English.
Here are my thoughts on mapping for Course in EAL:
Mapping Starting Tabletop English and Tabletop English to EAL 1

While I wrote Tabletop English for Course in EAL learners, trialling revealed that EAL 1 teachers were also using it successfully and happily. However, the activities don’t cover past tense or future, so I’d say they are for ‘early beginners’.
Here are my mapping suggestions for EAL 1:
That’s it! Thanks for reading. You can find Tabletop sample activities to download and try out on the Payhip site: https://payhip.com/TheBookNextDoor/collection/tabletop-english-activity-packs
I’m currently working on some videos to show teachers what’s involved in the different activities, so watch this space…