Thank you for visiting my blog. Some of you have just seen this presentation at the IPSHA EAL/D Collegial Hub Meeting at St Peter’s Girl’s School. As promised, here are the resources I used in the lesson:
Why Friendships are so important: when friendships flourish in schools, children are happy to come to school and they are ready to learn. Healthy friendships help us to fly. Harmony in schools, empowered by skills and choices for healthier relationships, ultimately children feel better about themselves, self-compassion, healthy mindsets. Skills for relationships throughout life.
Gender Stereotypes: Myths & Truths.
The power of whole-school friendship strategy. Child friendly language, consistent approach across the school.
Reflection:
Before students can learn they must feel safe, trust, valued by self and others.
Session 2: Friendship Ninjas
Some students come to school with unrealistic expectations of friendships. This helps to simplify what to expect and how to navigate through what a friendship entails.
Using the Friend-O-Meter as a tool with your students to assess how their friendships make them feel.
Session 3:
Conflict in friendship: Conflict must be normalised in schools. Teach students to face conflicts head on. We were raised to avoid conflict, we don’t know how to have difficult conversations. This is not the same for our students. They are being raised in a different time.
Friendship Fire vs Mean on Purpose:
Usually 85% of friendship issues are Friendship Fires, its only 15% of Mean on Purpose. A friendship fire is something that happens when we have conflicts in friendships. These are normal to experience and happen frequently.
Mean on purpose is intentionally cruel and mean behaviour that was meant to hurt someone else.
We use the Friend-O-Cycle to give them skills to put out Friendship Fires and repair the friendship. When we ignore friendship fires, they get worse.
Where do students go to resolve a problem and talk it out? Talk it out bench, talk it out couch, break out room to have these conversations with friends.
Quick Comeback, is a short statement that won’t get them in trouble to use when someone is being mean on purpose. Examples: Stop, Not Cool, No, etc.
Talk It Out: Retell the situation, explain how you felt.
Session 4: Friendology 101
Response to Intervention Model: Friendship Skills
Snapshot of each stage.
How to Teach Friendology 101
We don’t introduce the term “Mean on Purpose” until Year 3. Focus on Friendship Fires in JP, students have difficulty differentiating between being mean on purpose or fires, so we leave this until later.
There are 8 sessions per stage. Every stage has a Tricky Situations session, this assists with real life examples in the classroom that students can relate to and learn from.
We can either play the video where they teach the concepts or you can use the slides where you guide the students and use the prompts
Session 5: Becoming a URStrong School/ Implementation
Reflect on Alignment
Plan for your Audience
Launch for Success.
Hosting a Day of Friendship: Ideas on the Padlet.
Afternoon Session:
Circle Time Activity led by Anthea Khutagt (Year 4 Teacher)
Today Anthea shared a classroom strategy that she has used with her students Reception to Year 6. I have also used sharing circles before but this one had a few differences which I think would work well.
Here is a template to use for the circle time, it must have a yes and no answer and all students.
Feel free to use this template to edit and suit your class. You can generate questions based on your inquiry, classroom issues, student interests and even get the children involved in creating questions for circle time.
Relationships matter, building relationships with your students matters, children want to be connected in their classroom, they want to know you and they want you to know them. Connection makes relationships and learning meaningful.
I really enjoyed the PD today and am looking forward to using URStrong across the school.
IB Approaches to Learning 2-Day Professional Development
St Andrew’s School: Tuesday 23rd & Wednesday 24th January 2024 (15 hours)
Presenters: Vicki Shaver & Renee Rehfeldt
Over the last two days I participated in this IB Workshop about the Approaches to Learning. Here I have outlined what was covered over the two days, as well as some useful resources and some of my reflections and wonderings. I hope you find them useful.
Overall purpose of workshop:
What skills positively influence and support a student’s approach to life-long learning?
All IB programmes develop the approaches to learning (ATL) skills categories of communication, social, self-management, research and thinking.
Engagement with this workshop will support:
Developing a deeper understanding of ATL as a way for students to acquire and use skills developed over time in order to access learning.
Considering contemporary research in order to apply metacognitive strategies throughout the learning process, with an emphasis on assessment as learning.
Designing the curriculum to encourage students to build these skills.
Reflecting on how developing cognitive, affective and meta-cognitive skills using a variety of strategies may increase the capacity of learners to become self- regulated and intrinsically motivated.
DAY ONE:
This is the link to the Padlet which has so many great resources. It will remain online for us to access. Check it out, it has IB documents, additional resources and an area all about Thinking Skills, we (teaching staff) can add to the padlet and share our plans as well.
We began the day with a fun activity that required the use of the Approaches to Learning (ATL) Skills including: thinking, communication, social, self-management and research. We did a BreakOut EDU task, requiring us to break into the box by code breaking in our table groups. There were a series of challenges which we solved as a team. This was a great activity that you could do with your class, and update it to get students to create their own break-out challenges for us or peers. Enjoyed this one.
As a group we were asked to create a visual poster that showed how the ATL and Learner Profiles relate. This was a tricky one, but we had many creative responses.
Self-Management Skills:
Decision making as a class, understanding that our actions have a flow on effect. I loved this idea of making decisions and seeing the outcomes of those decisions through the “What Should Danny Do?” Book series. There is also a series called “What Should Darla Do?” as well.
We brainstormed all of the ways we teach and foster self-management skills in our classrooms, including setting routines, expectations, roles and responsibilities of the students, mindfulness and reflective tasks etc.
For me, as an EALD teacher, this task was really relatable and useful for the communication skills of my students. I will be using these more often in my lessons with my students. Mainly, this sort of task assists with conversation skills and explaining one’s thinking.
Thinking Skills:
We did a Mathematics lesson using these templates for year levels. We were encouraged to make the thinking visible by prompting thinking times at different stages of the lesson.
Information Literacy, Media Literacy & Ethical Use of Media/ Information.
We did a group activity determining the best after school snack. We had to use facts to back our opinion of the best after school snack. This process was them opened up, where people tallied their preferences for after school snacks and questioned the facts. With the data, we discussed what we could do with out students to teach them about facts, how to be more specific and clear with our facts, how to compare the facts.
What does it mean to be principled? Academic Integrity, is doing the right thing, the honest thing on your work.
Wonderings:
How will displays support ATL Skill development? Teacher created and student created? Start of year set-up, visual posters, activities that engage students in those skills, having provocations, discussions, spaces to explore and learn from. How will students be invited to create and be seen to own their learning space?
How will our learning spaces & digital spaces support our students with their ATL development? I am looking into this with my “Seesaw” Hat on, how can we make the ATL Skills visible as tags on learning tasks consistently across the school? We have Digital Portfolios on Seesaw, and I feel we need to continue our learning and development of that space to reflect our IB culture and values.
How will initial routines support ATL Skill development? Consistency and use of the ATL language and visual representations across the school, will assist in this process. Students will begin seeing, using and understanding the language and applying this to their everyday lives.
Take Aways:
Split Screen Learning Goals:
I’m glad this come up for me again, it was something I have wanted to use in my lessons at the very beginning of the lesson to set the tone and then reflect on at the end of the lesson. Yes we are learning about this content today and we are also focusing on these skills today.
For the last part of day 2 we were given time to reflect on our own class planning and which ATL skills we would be intentionally focusing on and teaching in our first unit of inquiry. As the EALD teacher, I spent this time reviewing my planners from previous years and looking at how the ATL skills could be highlighted or evident in my planning. I also spent this time working alongside Year level teams to see what their focus areas would be to support this learning with my students.
As always, having this time at the start of the year to reflect on our teaching skills and creating processes to support teaching and learning in our school settings is appreciated and valuable.
Thanks to Vicki Shaver and Renee Rehfeldt for running the 2-Day workshop and providing many useful resources for us to access. Most of the resources on this blog post have come from them, including all of the Padlet resources on the link above and images from their presentation.
Presented by Trish Tynan (St Peter’s Girls), Arasmia (Ari) Hanna & Julia Procopio EALD Teacher’s (St Peter’s College)
Today I attended the IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Meeting at St Peter’s College, presented by Ari Hanna , Julia Procopio (EALD Teachers at St Peter’s) and Trish Tynan (IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Coordinator from St Peter’s Girl’s College).
Here is the PDF for the presentation and some of my notes and key take aways from the presentation.
Family separation, father’s/ mother’s still in China or working abroad.
High and varied expectations at home from school
Lots of co-curricular or additional tutoring.
Sleep issues, exhaustion from translation and additional processing
Counselling- change of culture, adjusting to Australian culture and expectations
School wide activities, making sure these are communicated and translated
Celebrating events from their culture
Suggested strategies to support EALD families wellbeing:
Translation resources, digital resources with subtitles, printed newsletters with translation options, WiChat groups, Seesaw translation. (We already do this at St Andrew’s, but there is always opportunity for improvements in some areas)
School liaison officer to oversee community inclusion, parent morning teas for EALD families sharing stories
Intensive English Language Programmes being included like LOTE lessons not as a learning support role.
Parent Interview Booking system with an option to select or provide a translator.
Celebrate mother tongue, celebrate our differences and acknowledge in whole school events. (We do this well at St Andrew’s)
Refection for my school setting: I realise we have a great focus on student well-being in general, but how are we specifically catering for EALD student wellbeing? These factors are very much a concern for many children in the EALD community. What can we offer as a way of further supporting wellbeing for our students and families?
Mother Tongue Classes: St Peter’s College have begun a programme to support and foster mother-tongue language within the community. Teacher: Shelby Baker: sbaker@stpeters.sa.edu.au.
These classes assist in these areas:
Students can be proud of their own identities (both EALD and Non-EALD)
Limiting or removing a deficit view of any student regarding their cultural background
School wide activities to bring everyone together and break the language barriers (food, music, dance…)
Whole school celebrations Eg of Chinese New Year, to highlight the significance and importance of celebrating everyone.
At St Andrew’s we have Mandarin lessons as the additional specialist language being taught, however, we do not provide a mother tongue class, this is so much more than language learning. I wonder if there is an opportunity for such classes to exist in our setting as a co-curricular elective, with a pure focus on celebrating and learning about our community’s cultures.
Trish Tynan Presenting:
EALD students and NAPLAN: Parental permission of student exemption, students can also be withdrawn, parent consent and awareness. These assessments can be such a challenge for our students, if their parents wish for them to participate, we need to ensure they are given enough support and considerations leading up to these tests.
Start a OneNote for EALD plans and sharing lessons, photo content etc.
Legislation: Entitlement of every child that they can access the curriculum. Inclusion and equity. If our school doesn’t have a programme for these students, we are not compliant. Are we providing enough support for these students. We are mandated by the AITSL Standards: 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and economic backgrounds. 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities. 7.2 Comply with legislative administrative and organisational requirements.
Early Intervention for EALD in the ELC.
Polyglot students, a person who speaks, writes, or reads a number of languages.
Enrolment processes, international enrolments via zoom. Trish has one day a week to do enrolment processes, she has at least three enrolments on these days every week at St Peter’s girls.
St Peter’s Girls Setting:
EALD Support usually begins Week 4, Term 1, after all assessments and letters have gone home to parents. (We have a similar system at St Andrew’s).
The EALD team has three staff members and a coordinator. EALD teachers have teacher assistants to support and create resources.
The EALD coordinator has one day a week to simply focus on enrolment interviews and assessments.
EALD is a subject, not just a support programme. It is a language, it should be offered during language learning times (Mandarin). St Peter’s Girls, it is a subject which is advertised to parents as an additional area to get families in. As a subject, it is assessed and reported on.
Parents agree to enrol students into EALD subject as a condition of assessments prior to beginning.
Early EALD Intervention Programme in ELC. (This is something I would love to explore and bring to St Andrew’s setting).
Questions/ Wonderings:
When are EALD assessments (LEAP Levels) due in Independent Schools? Leadership in independent schools are not collecting this data or placing value on it. In DECS schools, this data is mandated and monitored. Functional Grammar, consistent approach across the school. You can use the LEAP levels with all students.
Are your staff aware of LEAP Levels? LEAP levels should be known across the school, classroom teachers can be using these documents across the board, not only for EALD students.
Is the student just EALD or is there something more going on? The information shows that there is an overlap between EALD & DLN (Diverse Learning Needs). We had discussions about how we address our suspicions with parents about students needs beyond EALD concerns.
Next EALD Meeting: Wednesday 13th September, Term 3 Week 8.
As always it was a pleasure to have professional discussions in the area of EALD learning with passionate teachers across the independent school sector. It was wonderful to attend St Peter’s College for this meeting. I was also fortunate to be able to catch up with an old friend and colleague (Paul Huebl) who gave me a tour of the school grounds. What a delightful afternoon!
PD Hours: 1:00-4:00pm Presentation Time, and additional hours for creating content for this presentation, research and preparations.
Trish Tynan, an EAL/D specialist and IPSHA Network Hub President, from St Peter’s Girls School and myself, Jade Peartree, EAL/D Teacher, from St Andrew’s Primary School, have collaborated to present at the 2022, IPSHA EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting.
Please see the agenda attached below. We presented about all things EAL/D in the Independent School Sector including:
Data Collection and Assessments
Enrolment Processes for EAL/D families
The Teaching & Learning Cycle
Quality teaching and assessing using LEAP levels (Learning English: Achievement and Proficiency) and ACARA National Literacy Learning Progressions, using Moderation Benchmarks.
Sharing Digital Tools and Resources we can use with EAL/D students, including examples like Seesaw, Lexia, and Humanoid Robots.
This was my first time presenting to the EAL/D community. I have had previous experiences running professional development opportunities about digital technologies but this was different. I have been an EAL/D teacher since 2020, I am new to this area of teaching and learning and Trish Tynan has been my mentor for the last few years. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to collaborate with Trish and gain insights into the EAL/D profession. I have learnt a lot from Trish, especially in regards to our school processes for enrolments and the importance of data collection.
Whilst the PD itself was only 4 hours, there was a lot of behind the scenes work. Trish and I had multiple Zoom meetings to go over the content for the presentation. We created the Google Slide together and discussed the areas we would cover individually. Time was allocated to go over our own documentation, provide samples and evidence ready for the participants to view and engage with. We also set up digital files for our participants to have access to once the day was over, including assessment tools, the curriculum documents like the ACARA National Literacy Learning Progressions and the LEAP Level documents.
The experience for me was reaffirming that I am developing and building a solid EAL/D Programme within our school context. The feedback from my EAL/D colleagues was positive and supportive.
Below is the link to the LEAP Level documents which we use in the EAL/D Programme, and I have also attached the assessment tracking sheets. My next goal is to share these documents with all teaching staff at my own school. These would assist with planning, teaching and assessing for the benefit of our EAL/D students.
Presented by Fiona Howat, Literacy Coordinator, EALD Teacher R-6 at PAC.
The IPSHA EAL/D Hub Group meet twice a year. Fiona Howat from PAC hosted our meeting this September, 2021. It was lovely to reconnect with EAL/D colleagues from varying school settings across the state. We had the opportunity to discuss how our EAL/D students and families have been handling the pandemic and ways in which we have supported them in our schools. This is especially significant for the EAL/D community as many family members are overseas and being heavily effected by COVID. The inability to travel, visit their loved ones and the separation many families are experiencing is immense. We had important discussions about student well-being and mental health as well as discussions around the mental health of family members and teaching staff.
In table groups we brainstormed the following: Challenges for our EAL/D Families during COVID: International Community, Challenges to learning, for schools and teachers, challenges faced by students and EAL/D families. This was a great way to see different perspectives and look at ways we can assist people in our schools with the current issues being faced.
We also had the opportunity to read one of the attached articles and discuss our thoughts in groups. I have attached the articles here so I may go back and read the ones I wasn’t assigned on the day, they may be an interesting read for you also:
Vocabulary: As educators and specifically EAL/D teachers, we understand the importance of building vocabulary. What’s useful for EAL/D students is useful for ALL students. Refreshing and exploring words to understand our world and our learning is critical in making connections and expressing ourselves.
Today we looked at the “3 Tiers of Vocabulary” by Christina DeCarbo. Her website outlining the tiers is below.
We were all give a word from this attached document: semantic gradient .docx We were asked to line up from the lowest sounding word to the loudest. This demonstrated the way in which words can be perceived and how that can change in different contexts. I loved this idea and would love to do something similar with my students, see photo using colour paint cards from hardware stores. You can use this strategy in many ways, like creating a list of words more interesting than ‘said’, or writing synonyms.
Fiona set up a EAL/D Hub Meeting group on Google Docs to share valuable resources from our meeting. One of the tasks around building vocabulary involved us looking at picture books and targeting specific words within the text to assist students with connecting with the text and making connections with other texts. Here is an example from a book called “The Paper Bag Princess” by David Munsch
I hope you find this blog reflection useful, I use this to keep track of my professional learning and gather useful resources, articles and share what I am learning about with my colleagues.
I attended this PD on the 12th of August as I am currently working with Reception EALD (English as Additional Language or Dialect) students who are developing their English language skills. This PD gave me some insights into the progressions of language and literacy development, as well as the opportunity to engage with other professionals and share resources.
These are my notes from the PD, I wrote these as a record of my own learning but also to share with colleagues, teachers and parents who wish to understand more about how students learn and what we can do to support them.
Expressive Language vs Receptive Language:
Receptive language means the ability to understand information. It involves understanding the words, sentences and meaning of what others say or what is read. Expressive language means being able to put thoughts into words and sentences, in a way that makes sense and is grammatically accurate.
Language & Literacy rich environments: What can we see/ hear in these environments?
Conversations between teachers and students, students with their peers.
Sharing of ideas, verbally, visually.
Vocabulary, opportunities for new words to be used and displayed in multiple languages
Curiosity around language, exploring languages through play, inquiry methods
Student voice, how do children contribute to the language rich environment, when are their voices heard? Class meetings, sharing time, student storytelling time, role plays and performance, audio recordings etc.
Setting Goals in these key areas? Form, Content & Use
I found it interesting to note that the main reasons for language delay are middle ear infections in early childhood that have gone untreated or a family history of learning difficulties.
How can we create flexibility in the use of vocabulary in the classroom? Routines in the classroom can sometimes be limiting as we tend to have repeated dialogue, which leaves less opportunity for the use of new vocabulary. The same language, same instructions, same responses from students continue. So, let’s try to change our routines a little, change the guiding questions during sharing times, use different vocabulary each week to begin your sharing times. Story times could be read by the teacher, an audio book, by a student or visitor/ parent.
The Screen Debate:
It’s important for families to spend time together, parents are the first people in a child’s life who influence their lives. When we talk about children developing receptive and expressive language skills, this starts at home. Every interaction, conversation, instruction, routine etc impacts this development. As we know, parents and their children are using screens more often than before (television, iPads, tablets, phones, laptops, computer games etc). This has meant that families are having less interactions and conversations, children are not developing those receptive and expressive language skills to meet milestones as they are having less opportunities to do so.
My perspective:
I am a parent, my son is almost 3 years old and he will watch videos on my phone or iPad, he also watches television and movies. Sometimes I will watch these with him and talk about what we have watched. I also like to watch a show or film that relates to a book we have read and then we role play and play games related to that book afterwards. I am fortunate to be working part-time this year, so I have the time to create activities and play with my son. I am not Early Childhood trained, but have been an educator of young children for 16 years now, and I know the importance of play with children and how much learning occurs through play. I believe it’s a balancing act, we will have screens in our lives and it’s how we use them, when we use them and how often this occurs that matters.
To give you some perspective on my experience, I woke up this morning at 6:30am with my son bright eyed and ready to play. He has played with his toys, we have read 2 books, eaten breakfast, which he helped me to make (banana pancakes, yummy). Now I am blogging at 8:30am whilst my son is watching nursery rhymes on my phone! It has given me 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted working time; I am guilty of using a screen/device to babysit so I can get some work done. I won’t finish this blog post today, it’s likely I will post it in a week’s time after 3 attempts to complete this post (EDIT: On my third attempt I finally finished)! Parents face this battle of finding a balance and sometimes screens help us to find some balance. There is no such thing as a perfect parent, but I think being aware, mindful and balanced when it comes to our use of screens is extremely important. We don’t have screens at the dinner table, we have outdoor play times, inside play times and varied activities to keep my son engaged. I do worry about my son’s obsession with the iPad and my phone, I limit his time as he gets really upset when I take it away, I use a timer and verbal warnings so he knows that his time on the screen is almost over, this helps. This could be a whole blog post on its own, to be continued… drop me a comment if you feel this needs to be explored further.
What are Language Development Tasks?
Tasks that assist and encourage language development. You need to know the stages of Language Development to know where to begin and what stage to teach for your child/ student. Stephi was reluctant to use age-based milestones to show the stages of speech and language development, as this varies so much for students, however, as a parent and an educator, I like to know what typically should be achieved at a certain age. I found this website with a graphic that I think is useful:
I need more hours in my day to explore these hierarchy graphics. I want to understand them in more specific detail and how I am prompting my students through their learning. I am also interested in the language processing hierarchy, starting from the bottom, I understand the stages but would like to provide examples of how students do these things and demonstrate where they sit on this graphic.
The Essential Ingredients to ensure student language and literacy development:
Relationship, building connections with your learners
Fundamental Skills of Communication
Bloom and Lahey’s model:
Zone of Proximal Development: pitching learning at the right level for that child’s learning ability and progression.
Intent and Motivation for learners
Other personal notes of interest:
As educators we need to be careful not to assume the prior knowledge of our students.
Fine motor skills are not assessed or found in the curriculum, it’s an assumed skill, not being able to use scissors, draw a circle, use of screens, not knowing how to draw or hold a pencil etc. If a child cannot do these things they cannot begin writing, they need to develop their fine motor skills, pre-writing skills.
Learning to read and then reading to learn. Focus on comprehension, purposes of reading, for enjoyment, finding information, learning a skill, history, art appreciation etc. Too often we are focusing on word recognition, decoding strategies and reading words on a page instead of our purpose for reading. There is a place for both, obviously, but we need to teach all skills to assist with students seeing themselves as readers.
Early years. Spend time exploring our reality/ our environment. What can you see, hear, smell? Talk to me about what you can hear, see, smell? Etc. Model and provide alternative vocabulary when describing what you can see, hear and smell etc.
Language is not just about what we say. Explicitly teaching body language, eye contact, facial expressions, body gestures, hand gestures, posture. Awareness of self, then awareness of others. Social stories.
Resources to explore further:
Casey Caterpillar for fine motor development, kinaesthetic process.
To assist St Andrew’s Staff with current world events and dealing with the very likely possibility of remote or distance learning, I was asked to present information for teachers about how to explore, set and create learning activities that their students can access from home. I ran 3 Professional Development training sessions about the use of Seesaw Activities.
I became a Seesaw Ambassador in 2017, and have just updated my Seesaw Ambassador Training. I have been given great resources that I am sharing with you now.
Please note, our school setting has been using Seesaw for the last 4-5 years, this is a platform that is already familiar to our teachers, students and families, (the whole school community), which is why we have chosen to continue utilising this platform. We have mainly used Seesaw as a means to showcase student learning, like a digital portfolio.
I am aware that other online resources are being used to suit the needs of our teachers and students such as Edmodo, Showbie, Google Classrooms etc. Use what works for you.
Here is my PD Powerpoint presentation in a PDF format for my workshops. You can access all of the video links to assist you with exploring, assigning and creating your own Seesaw activities: Seesaw Activities PD 25:03:20
If you have any more questions about Seesaw Activities please write in the comment thread below or email me directly. My email is jpeartree@standrews.sa.edu.au
Thank you and all the best for your educational planning using Seesaw. You are all doing an amazing job dealing with the current state of events. Hold your heads up high, you can do this.
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.
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 (free 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.
Professional Development Monday 16th September 2019
9:00am-3:30pm
My team and I attended this professional development today with the intention to learn, develop and build positive mindsets in our students and in our school community. Here are a few of my notes from today and the key messages I am taking back with me.
Healthy Relationships: Essential Goodness, every person is born with goodness, try to see this and harness it in every child. No one is going to learn from being constantly criticised. We build connections, see the child for who they are and their essential goodness, then build from there. Children won’t learn from people they don’t like. Developing good, trusting and healthy relationships is key.
Emotions are contagious. Be mindful of the emotions you bring to the room. Talk about this with your students, be aware of the moods we bring to the classroom.
Compassion: In moments of sadness, you are not alone. Building communities that want to care for each other. Compassion is crucial for the thread of society. Compassion starts with Self-Compassion. Self care and self forgiveness. Compassion doesn’t come naturally to everybody and this can be learnt.
What are the things that you do for yourself that make you feel good?
Empathy: It isn’t all about you! How are other people feeling? Can we care about other’s feelings and put ourselves in their shoes? We teach this by being empathetic beings ourselves, model this for our students.
App suggestion for meditation, gratification practise and set an intention for living: Buddhify: https://buddhify.com/
Taming the Inner Critic: What does our inner critic say? Is this true? How can we challenge that inner critic? Write down 5 nice things you can say about yourself. Inner Critic vs Inner Hero get into the healthy habit, don’t believe every thought that comes into your head. Reflect on your inner critic comments. Are those thoughts true, are they helpful, would you say it or think it about someone else?
Using EQ and Disagreeing Gracefully: It is hard to disagree with others, and usually when we disagree we have big emotions, so our thinking is low.
The Fixed Position: Letting go of the need to be right. Meeting people half way.
Respectful disagreements framework.
Win-win:The art of compromise.
Optimism: Rational Optimism. Try to find something good and rational. We are born with a negative bias. Brains were designed to look out for problems or dangers, the fight, flight or freeze mode. These are good indicators of how we are feeling. If you don’t feel right, it’s probably not right. Trust your gut instincts. Tune into your own feelings, are they rational or irrational feelings?
Top 3 things to be happier and more resilient:
1. Gratitude Practice
2. Identify 3 things that went well in your day/ life (This improves levels of optimism)
3. Swapping the phrase “Have to” to “Get to”. “Do we have to do this?” to “Do we get to do this?” I have to go to school today, I have to clean my room, I have to eat my dinner, I have to do my homework, I have to hang out the washing etc These are negative mindsets about our day and the jobs we need to do. But if we changed the dialogue to “I get to” then it becomes “I get to clean my room, because I have so many toys to play with, I get to eat dinner, some children don’t have food to eat, I get to do my homework because I’m lucky to receive an education, I get to hang out the washing because I have clean clothes to wear” Etc.
Being productive and capable in hardship. Children need to feel capable, because it’s the opposite of feeling insecure, less confident and hopeless. Is there anything you can do to turn this around? What actions could you take to make things right again? Moving past the victim mentality. Teaching children to think: I am hopeful, powerful and capable.
Problem Solving and Decision Making through Agency and Self-Efficacy:
Strengths. Self-Efficacy and Poise. How to weigh things up. Every time we tell our children what to do or solve their problems for them we do not allow them to wire up their thinking to solve problems for themselves. What are you going to do to solve your problem? Give them ownership, don’t jump in to solve their problem. We won’t be there to solve their problems in all situations, we need to let them feel disappointment, be upset, experience pain, so we can learn how to sit in those feelings and be okay, and then work out how we could solve or work on the problem for next time. To become a good decision maker as an adult you need to have experiences, make mistakes when they are little to learn from them.
Poise: If you are angry, upset, overwhelmed etc the BEST thing you can do is to not do or say anything at all! Wait until you are calm and can think clearly.
Group Meetings, Family Meetings, the importance of getting your group together regularly to meet and discuss how things are going. Structured and safe opportunity to catch up and discuss how your group is functioning. All groups/ families have problems, normalising this and giving everyone the opportunity to enter a discussion to address these problems. Once a week is ideal. Give children the opportunity to share their opinions and suggest ways to solve their own problems. Student voice, we all function at our best when we have a voice. The goal is to solve the problems together, we don’t solve their problems for them. Student ownership.
Challenging Feelings: Emotional regulation, in order to get good at handling your feelings you have to know yourself well and you have to be compassionate towards others. Acknowledge the feelings, name them. What is it you’re feeling? Accept that feeling. Do not resist that feeling. Key lessons to help us manage and deal with our challenging feelings: Gratitude Practice, Movement, Laughter, Music, Acts of Kindness, Watch what you watch (video games, social media, television programmes and movies that desensitise us to violence, negativity, it will leave negativity within you and decrease your empathy), Mindfulness, breathing & presence.
Wellbeing:
What can we do to help you with your wellbeing? Always ask the students what they want/ need to feel okay.
Meaning and purpose in everyday things and life. Help children to tune in to who they are, what is your purpose?
Fun for the sake of fun. Flow, knowing how to enjoy your life and lose yourself in the moment.
Choose who you spend time with, sleep, fire to wire.
Turning on your happy hormones:
Dopamine. Set small achievable goals. When we set a goal we give ourselves a sense of achievement, a reward.
Endorphins: Movement, exercise.
Oxytocin: Trust and receive trust, improve your social bonds.
Serotonin: The “one up” feeling. Have an awareness of this, self-confidence and self-esteem is impacted by this. Comparing ourselves to others and feeling we are “better” than others.
Here are a couple of videos from today I thought were worth sharing with students about their minds and acts of kindness.
Sentis: Neuroplasticity Clip: Our brains change based on our choices of behaviour and what we feed it.
Random Acts of Kindness: Colour Your World With Kindness
Smiles are contagious. Activity 1 minute smile with a partner, try not to smile. I will be doing this with my class. I found it so challenging not to smile when someone was smiling at me. Smiling is contagious and so are our moods. Come to school with a positive mindset.