Jade Peartree's Blog

My professional reflections and documentation

Menu

Main menu

Skip to primary content
Skip to secondary content
  • Who is Jade Peartree?
  • AITSL Teacher Standards
  • Professional Knowledge
    • 1. Know students and how they learn.
    • 2. Know the content and how to teach it.
  • Professional Practice
    • 3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
    • 4. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
    • 5. Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning.
  • Professional Engagement
    • 6. Engage in professional learning.
    • 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.

Monthly Archives: October 2019

English as an Additional Language (EAL) Program

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Jade Peartree
Reply

Professional Development

EAL Hub Meeting Hosted at Pembroke Junior School

30/10/19 1:00-3:30pm

Presented by Nikki Abdilla

Next year I have been given the role of the EALD Teacher at St Andrew’s. I attended the EAL Hub Group Meeting at Pembroke Junior School today to gather some resources and learn about how the EALD program works within the Pembroke school context. Here are my notes from my professional development today.

Thanks Nikki for sharing your practice and hosting this hub meeting today. I look forward to attending the next hub meeting.

Initial Assessments for EAL Student:

Good resource: Oral Test: Book “You Choose” by Nick Sharrat.

Conversation about the images. Record conversation on iPad, receptive and expressive language assessment.

Written Test: Starting at Year 1 do oral and written assessment. Yr 2-7

Documentation: Areas of Success, Areas of Concern. Assessment sheet after conversation.

Use the Levelling Language and Literacy Levels Folder. PDF links below.

language-and-literacy-levels-eald-levels-7-10language-and-literacy-levels-eald-levels-1-6

language-and-literacy-levels-eald-levels-7-10

Intensive Grammar and Genre Writing Program.

Traditional Grammar vs Functional Grammar. Look into this and make a decision within our school.

2 EAL sessions per group, per week. Students removed from class during literacy or LOTE lessons.

Building Teacher Capacities, supporting within the classroom instead of student withdrawal. Classroom teachers have more opportunities to make a difference in the lives of the children they have in their classrooms, supporting these teachers, literacy underpins all learning areas, showing them by leading sessions within their classes, modelling how to support their EAL students.

ELC & Reception- Oral activities, Games, Sorts, Songs and Stories

Speech Pathologists are a great resource

Apps: Toca Boca- Pronouns, Sago Mini- Pronouns and Prepositions,

Australian Apps: Play School, ABC Kids, Reading Doctor Apps, Hearbuilder Listening and Following Directions, Smashing Grammar, Padlet, Borrow Box (freeĀ  just use a public library app to listen to audio books), EPIC (Free online audio books on app and website).Listening to audio books and hearing English at home makes a difference.

Online Resources: Twinkl Account, Teachers Pay Teachers, Padlet, Pinterest, abc website (Learn English)

Board Games: Pickles to Penguin, Sentence Scramblers, Articulate for Kids, Guess Who, Sorting Games.

Practical Experiences: Cooking, making, acting, puppetry.

Big Books: Oral Language, PM

Making own books: Lisa Burman & Book Creator

Note: It is important to feature different ethnicities within your resources so students can identify with them.

Realia: Practical Play, using resources to play and have conversations.

Highly recommend Parent Information Session to inform parents about the support program.

How do we help students in the classrooms?

  • Word fans: use them in EAL lessons, add to them, send them back to class.
  • Padlet access in the classroom
  • Reception Program: Teacher packs with activities related to their lessons in class, vocabulary resources to stay in classes that TA’s can use.

I have joined the EAL Adelaide Facebook group to continue sharing and learning with other EAL professionals.

Thanks for reading my blog.

 

Posted in 3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning., 6. Engage in professional learning., 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community., Professional Engagement | Leave a reply

Schools are People Places: Building Trust is Essential by Steve Francis

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Jade Peartree
Reply

Staff PD Day: Monday 14th October 2019

8:30am-2:30pm

Schools are People Places: Building Trust is Essential

By Steve Francis

Today we had a staff professional development day about the importance of building trust in our work place and finding a good work life satisfaction and balance. I really enjoyed today’s PD and found it quite useful to have time to reflect on our current skills and what we could do to improve our individual situations. We also spent time unpacking effective teams and how to work efficiently and collaboratively.

Here are some of my notes and take aways from today’s session:

  • People Skills vs Technical Skills. In our profession you require people skills to be successful.

How do we build trust relationships?

  1. Trust Yourself
  2. Having credibility in other people’s eyes. 4 Cores: Character & Competence

  • Integrity (Do you do what you say you’re going to do?),
  • Intention (What they think our intentions are, assumptions about our intentions),
  • Capabilities (Skills, Knowledge, Expertise, Experience)
  • Results (Do we deliver, do we follow through with what we plan to do?)

Building Trust Relationships, 13 Behaviours

  • Talking straight- balance between sugar coating and addressing issues
  • Demonstrate respect
  • Clarify expectations
  • Create transparency- no hidden agendas
  • Confront reality- address issues
  • Practise accountability
  • Rights wrongs- when we make mistakes, own it, apologise
  • Listen first-be a good listener and understand what other people’s concerns are
  • Get better- strive to be our best and improve
  • Keep commitments- delivering on the promises we make, following through
  • Show loyalty- talk about people as if they were present
  • Deliver results- do the things that matter, that make a difference
  • Extend trust- trust others, we are a team

Parents see moments of truth and base their trust about ourselves and school in these moments of truth. These can be simple things like the way your classroom looks, the atmosphere in the yard before school, how a teacher greets people in the morning, what their children say about their day at pick up time etc.

Teamwork

Why work as a team? Lightens workload, shared experience, develops relationships, working to our strengths, feels good to be part of a team and feel trusted and to trust others.

Efficient, Effective and Consistency of good practise. Gives people a sense of connection and belonging.

  • Does the team have a clear purpose for existing?
  • Will working together lead to better results?

Highly Effective Teams Model:

  • Identifies Purpose, Clear Processes, Establish Trust, Focused Lead.

Line of Life: Ownership, Accountable, Responsible

Challenge others and ask them if they are living above the line of life. Below the line, we see blame, excuses and denial. Above the line we own our decisions, are accountable for our own actions and take responsibility in the role we play in our lives. I found this quite useful, and thought about applying this concept to student thinking. I have discussed the “Blame Game” with my students before, this could link in nicely.

How to respond to change: 3 choices

  • head in the sand
  • complain and deny
  • steer it

Stages of Change/ Concern

  • Information: What is the change, what do I need to know?
  • Personal impact: how will this impact me and my workload?
  • How to implement this change: what will we need to do to get this going?
  • Impact concerns: What impact have happened since the changes have occurred?
  • Collaboration: How do we work together to manage the change?
  • Refinement: Redo something that we didn’t do before, tweak and refine things.

You get to choose your attitude!

Attitudes are contagious. Is your attitude worth catching?

I loved this. It’s all a state of mind and how we deal in any given situation. I find that when I get into a negative headspace, feel pressured or stressed, my class picks up on my mood and we end up having a more challenging day. I want to bring this to my students’ attention. All of our attitudes are contagious, act with kindness, be treated kindly, act with anger, receive anger etc. Something to think about.

7 Steps to Successful Change

What would I need to accomplish today to feel good about the day?What is the most important thing for me to do now?

Email warning: Email Survival Rules

4 D’s: Delete, Delegate, Do it Now Or Decline. Deal with it, Decide and move on.

7 Tips to Increase Work Life Satisfaction

  1. Monitor your self talk
  2. Stop Feeling guilty about what you haven’t done
  3. Stick to your golden rules (Own family rules that suit needs of all, create with partners)
  4. Use your time well
  5. Keep perspective: in a year from now, will this matter?
  6. Look after yourself: self care routines
  7. Avoid DHS (Deferred Happiness Syndrome)

Overall, I had a great day. I had time to reflect on my personal work life balance and satisfaction and identify the areas I need to be more mindful of. In particular, I need to think about self care, exercising and having some me time. All very well and good however, I find excuses or busy myself, especially when I’m working/ teaching full time, have a 2 year old and two teenagers at home, am planning our wedding (happening this Saturday!) and running a household cooking, cleaning, etc. Luckily I have a great partner at home and we support one another. Both of us being teachers, we understand the pressure, workload and needs required to be successful and manage.

The point from today is, we are all busy and we need to prioritise what’s important, address what needs to be done first and don’t sweat the small stuff. Make time for the important things and use systems to be efficient with our time. Teaching is a demanding and highly rewarding profession. I get great work satisfaction as this is my passion, however it can also be draining and mentally challenging. Finding a healthy balance is key.

Here’s to a positive start to Term 4, starting refreshed after a holiday, excited about our wedding this weekend and looking forward to a strong and rewarding finish to a wonderful year back with my Year 3’s.

Have a great term everyone.

Posted in 4. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments., 6. Engage in professional learning., 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community., Professional Engagement, Professional Practice | Leave a reply

Recent Posts

  • IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Meeting Term 1, 2023
  • RAP: Reconciliation Action Plan at St Andrew’s School
  • EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting Term 3, 2022
  • The Art of Inquiry; Kath Murdoch, Staff PD Day, Session 1
  • IPSHA EAL/D Hub Meeting Term 3, 2021

Twitter Feed

Tweets by @jadevidovich

My Purpose

As an educator I feel it is one of my responsibilities to reflect on my professional practice. This in turn will assist me in developing my teaching knowledge, skills and standards. My professional blog will record my progress and provide evidence of my development. I will be using the AITSL teaching standards to address and meet teacher registration guidelines.

Recent Comments

  • Jade on EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting Term 3, 2022
  • Victoria Slater on EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting Term 3, 2022
  • Heather Wood on Creating Digital Books & Student QR Codes
  • Emma on Creating Digital Books & Student QR Codes
  • Roisin on Teachers are Learners

Categories

  • 1. Know students and how they learn.
  • 2. Know the content and how to teach it.
  • 3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
  • 4. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
  • 5. Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning.
  • 6. Engage in professional learning.
  • 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.
  • AITSL Teacher Standards
  • Professional Engagement
  • Professional Knowledge
  • Professional Practice
  • Uncategorized

Archives

  • March 2023
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • March 2022
  • October 2021
  • June 2021
  • August 2020
  • March 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • July 2016
  • January 2016
  • October 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
Edublogs Default by Edublogs
Skip to toolbar
  • Log in
  • About WordPress
    • About Edublogs
    • Edublogs.org
    • Documentation
    • Contact