Category Archives: 6. Engage in professional learning.

IPSHA EAL/D Collegial Meeting at Pembroke Term 3, 2024

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IPSHA EAL/D Collegial Meeting

Term 3, 2024

PD Hours 1:00-4:00pm (3 hours)

Presented by Nikki Abdilla, EAL/D Teacher at Pembroke

Many thanks to Pembroke School and Nikki Abdilla for hosting our IPSHA EAL/D Group Meeting today. It was wonderful to be in her teaching space and learn about Pembroke’s setting and strategies to support the EAL/D community.

Here are a few notes from the presentation today as well as some great resources that were shared.

How EAL/D Students are Selected for Support at Pembroke:

  • Student Admissions Team
  • Interviews with Head of Junior School and EAL/D Teacher
  • Meeting with Enrolments once per term to identify potential EAL/D support needs.
  • Flags from classroom, specialists and Inclusive Education Teachers,
  • Referral System: Intranet, online forms
  • Oral Assessments- ELC-Year One and New Arrivals.

New Student Interview Process:

  • Interview Proformas at enrolment that are specific to EAL/D students and families.
  • Ask for a copy of their EAL Interview Form, use in own setting
  • Enrolment Form Example 

Assessments:

  • Oral Assessments- ELC, Year 1 & New Arrivals or Graduates of Intensive English Programs.
  • Using a visual tool, pictures, can they identify nouns, use prepositions, retell events they have experiences, make connections to the images etc.
  • Written Assessments Year 1- Year 6
  • LEAP Levels

Feedback for Teachers:

  • Areas of Success/ Areas of Concern
  • Traffic Light System
  • Lesson Structure:
    • 2-3 lessons per week.
    • Lessons are explicit, targeted, goal driven, hands on and engaging.
    • Programmes- individual goals from assessments
    • Vocabulary and a Grammar focus for each lesson.
    • Expressive and receptive language opportunities each lesson.
    • TRUST: Safe environment to take risks building connections.
    • Humour, relationships (consecutive years)
    • Needs of students have dictated change with number of support lessons and types of lessons, including social (connection) needs.
    • Photo to insert from iPad

     

  • Activities:
    • Practical and hands on activities- cooking
    • Sorts and Games

Communication Tools:

One of my greatest take-aways from today’s session was learning about using subtitles and translation tools available for us in real time using PowerPoint presentations. Imagine using this resource in parent information evenings, parent interviews and as downloadable screen recordings to be viewed and accessed by the community. Brilliant!

  • In PowerPoint, using subtitles in PowerPoint, translated subtitles will appear when you read this screen aloud in presentation mode.
  • Google Translate
  • Using in PTI’s for instant translation in chosen language.
  • Using this in lesson times for students to have translated verbal instructions.
  • Parent Information Evenings, presenting to an audience with translated subtitles. .
  • Screen record the presentation and rewatch the recordings, upload onto Seesaw or QR code generator.

I created an instructional video for how to access subtitles using PowerPoint with live translations.

You can view it here:

Resource Sharing:

Games

  • Pickles to Penguins
  • Sentence Scramblers
  • Articulate for Kids
  • Granny’s Candies

Resources:

I would love to create some sets of vocabulary packs for my school setting that can be used by classroom teachers across varying year levels. Ideally these packs would include vocabulary that students will need for their units of inquiry. This is something I would like to action in 2025.

EALD in the Middle and Senior School at Pembroke:

  • Pembroke boarding house, a trained EAL teacher comes to tutor students Yrs 7-12 in groups or 1:1, 5 hours once a week.
  • Pembroke Connect Program (staff trained in Intensive English)
  • English lessons in China has been reduced. Covid also saw students having 2-3 years of online learning, this has impacted their levels of literacy.

NAPLAN:

  • Students who have been in Australia for less than a year can be exempt from NAPLAN.
  • The forms are online and translated in many different languages.
  • Parent consent is required.
  • Be proactive in this process, get the forms completed early.

As always it was lovely to spend the afternoon engaging with my EAL/D colleagues and sharing insights and resources together.

Thanks Nikki and Pembroke for hosting us today.

So many great resources.

Much appreciation.

URStrong PD

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URStrong PD 

Thursday 25th January 2024, (7 hours)

 

Presented by Tyson Greenwood & Donna Longden

Friendology: Friendship is a basic need.

URStrong Website with Resources: https://urstrong.com/members/

Padlet for resources: https://padlet.com/dlongden/st-andrew-s-school-6sfi2m652lfhx2sj

Session 1: The Science of Friendship

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

URS-Facilitator-Guide-2021

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.

Circle Time Template

Tyson Greenwood’s final session:

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.

RAP: Reconciliation Action Plan at St Andrew’s School

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Professional Development Reflections Term 3, 2022.

RAP WALK

Tuesday 7th June, 2022. 3:45-5:00pm

On the 7th of June, 2022, the staff at St Andrew’s were given time to explore the ways in which other staff are making Indigenous Australian cultures and perspectives visually represented in our school. We were able to take our own school tour to showcase ways in which we are implementing our school’s RAP (Reconciliation Action Plan).

We were asked to reflect on the following:

  • How do we show we RESPECT First Nations histories and cultures?
  • How do we show we provide OPPORTUNITIES for learning about First Nations histories and cultures?
  • How do we show we engage the wider community and create RELATIONSHIPS with First Nations people in our community?

Here is a slideshow of some of the photos of the spaces at St Andrew’s School, which I took to document and reflect on.

Here is a copy of our RAP Book for Children, it has so many wonderful resources and guiding questions and reflections to use during inquiry in the classroom.

RAP CHILDRENS BOOK_.1

I am very proud to work at a school with professionals who make so much effort to ensure cultures are represented and respected and that students feel comfortable to ask questions, be respectful and inclusive of others.

Recently the Year 6 students have spent time and effort creating a Reconciliation Garden. They were supported by their teacher, Cerys Phillips and Learning Assistant, Lorena Mortimer. Here are some photos of the garden, the signage went up over the school holidays.  Very proud of the actions our staff and students are taking at St Andrews.

A lot of credit can be given to Cerys Phillips, one of our Year 6 teachers, and the current Coordinator of Diversity and Equity at St Andrew’s. She is constantly sharing resources, awareness, key dates and creating content for staff and students to use in the classroom. I thank her for her passion in this area of the school. What we do and how we do it, matters. Thankful to work in a culturally inclusive school.

The Art of Inquiry; Kath Murdoch, Staff PD Day, Session 1

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Tuesday 15th March, 2022. Whole Day Staff PD (Pupil Free Day)

Today we began our St Andrew’s inquiry journey with Kath Murdoch! To say I am excited is an understatement!  I wrote five pages worth of notes (sadly, I’m not kidding!). Here is a summary of the day and my key take aways that I think are worth sharing. 

Cannot wait to continue the process together as a staff. There were so many wonderful moments from today’s PD, it is impossible to document them all. I will say that it felt like having professional conversations with a friend, everyone was open minded, eager to contribute and passionate about the topic at hand. Aren’t we lucky to have such a great opportunity to work with great minds. 

 What is Inquiry? 

Kath described inquiry as such, “The essence of inquiry is absolutely about wonder, curiosity and seeking answers to our questions”.  Inquiry is a way of being, a stance. It is not a subject or a lesson.  Inquiry is a sustained, perpetual curiosity.  Cultivate this curiosity.  

What does inquiry based learning mean to you? (my reflection)

  1. Discovering answers to our questions 
  2. Exploring ideas, questions and concepts 
  3. Forming understandings through an inquiry process

Lessons from today’s session:

These were four of the practices for inquiry teaching and learning that we focussed on today. These come from Kath Murdoch’s The Art of Inquiry cards.  

  1. Cultivating Curiosity: When do we give children the opportunity to share their curiosity and wonderings? Not just classroom topical wonderings, their life wonderings. What materials and opportunities do we provide in our classrooms to spark that curiosity? Try to be that genuine person who shows interest in their curiosities and share your own curiosities.   
  2. Notice: The practice of noticing, it is such a significant part of the inquiry teachers repertoire. If I stay curious I am better at noticing. What helps us to notice?  Slowing down, observing, taking time to have individual conversations with students. Have space to get inside student thinking. 

    What gets in the way? Over planning, noticing but not having time to dig deeper or address this.  

  3. Grow Learning Assets: Changing the word “work” to “learning”. “We need to finish our work: becomes “We need to continue with our learning”. Creating an awareness of building a learning toolkit, developing skills for learning and focusing on those Approaches to Learning in our inquiry journey. Using the What & How Method (see below) 
  4. Release: We need to release responsibility, give students the opportunity to do the heavy lifting themselves. Who owns the learning? Children have the right to own their own learning.  Be responsive to those moment in your classroom. Give yourself permission to go with the flow.  What can I release myself from? What do I leave behind and how can I move forward? What will best serve my students? I owe it to myself and my students to release.Flipping the gradual release model to rapid release.  

 

The practice I will be focussing on first is “Grow Learning Assets” but I was also very much drawn to “Release”.  One step at a time! Slow down. 

Grow Learning Assets and the What? & How? Method.  

The what is what we are learning about, the how is an approach to learning skill.  

Eg. What: What can we do to help others belong? How: As thinkers, how can we analyse information to understand it better.

I will use the What and How method to actively engage my students in their awareness in their learning and inquiry process. 

I work in small groups or 1:1 with EAL/D students. I wonder, in a classroom setting is it easier to release? When working in small groups for language intervention and support, we have goals for our non-English speaking learners, based on their lack of language and communication skills, we need to assist and model a lot of the language and learning. How can I employ more of my inquiry based teaching skills in what I do? 

I already use a play-based approach. Usually I set up a provocation or something to play with that will naturally encourage conversations and play. These playful scenes usually mirror their own classroom settings, or units of inquiry to help front load some vocabulary. From here we introduce new vocabulary and practise saying new words, sentences and phrases that accompany that type of play. I play alongside the learner and model the language. This is a starting point and I am eager to explore this further in our future sessions with Kath.

Exciting times at St Andrew’s.

Until the next session.