IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Meeting Term 3, 2023.

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Jade Peartree

Seymour College: Wednesday 13th September 2023, 1:00-4:00pm (3 hours PD)

Presented by:

Mingxia Wei- Head of Languages & Director of International Programs at Seymour College

Trish Tynan- EAL/D Specialist at St Peter’s Girl’s School & IPSHA EAL/D Coordinator.

It was a lovely afternoon visiting Seymour College and having the time to listen to how the EAL/D programme is delivered in their setting. It was particularly interesting to hear about their enrolment processes and how they specifically cater for new arrival students. Many parents prefer to have their children join the mainstream classroom and receive additional after school tutoring and EALD classes after school. There were many teaching and admin staff available on site to assist with translations and adapting to Australian school and community settings, which are quite different in comparison to Chinese settings. It is always a great insight and pleasure to learn how programmes are run in varying settings across Adelaide.

LEAP Level Moderation Activity:

How often should we be doing LEAP levels? Twice per semester using two samples of writing genres. This means four times per year, which can be a challenge, the levelling process takes a considerable amount of time and many of us (EALD Teachers) are doing this alone, we do not have a team and classroom teachers have not been trained on how to do them.

So, how do EALD staff manage to do this LEAP levelling in their own times/ non- teaching times? Some teachers request release days to LEAP level, others use their NIT or take lessons to do assessments with students each week.

In this session we were given three writing samples from Year 2 students and were asked to level the samples. This was a good opportunity for us to analyse samples of writing and look at the writing leap level rubrics to identify specific indicators to accurately level these students.

Using the Writing rubrics gives you a snap shot to quickly identify the LEAP level, however, it is important to use LEAP Evidence grid to identify the specific areas where students need support, their writing focus areas to further develop their English writing skills.

See attachments of the LEAP text type rubrics below and the LEAP evidence to inform teaching and learning grid.

1 learning-english-achievement-proficiency-leap-informative-texts

1 learning-english-achievement-proficiency-leap-recounting-narrating-texts

1 Persuasive and Evaluative texts

01 LEAP-Assessment-Monitoring-Recording (dragged)

Today, there were many rich professional discussions around how we cater for the needs of our EALD students in our own school settings. As always it was a pleasure to attend the IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Meeting.

Thanks Trish Tynan and Mingxia Wei for hosting us this afternoon.

IPSHA EALD Collegial Group Meeting Term 1, 2023

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Jade Peartree

St Peter’s College EALD Collegial Group Meeting

Wednesday 22nd March, 2023. 1:00-4:00pm (3 hours PD)

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.

EAL-D Meeting 22 March 2023.pptx

Wellbeing issues/ concerns with EALD families:

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.

EALD Resources to explore and share:

WordReference Multilingual Online Dictionary: https://www.wordreference.com/
ABC Education: https://www.abc.net.au/education
iSL Collective: https://en.islcollective.com/
Storybox Library: https://www.storyboxlibrary.com.au/
ABCYa: https://www.abcya.com/
British Council Learn English Kids: Online English Courses for EALD Families https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/
Unite for Literacy: https://www.uniteforliteracy.com/

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!

RAP: Reconciliation Action Plan at St Andrew’s School

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Jade Peartree

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.

EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting Term 3, 2022

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Jade Peartree

EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting.

Term 3, Wednesday 14th September, 2022.

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.

Agenda 14.09.2022 IPSHA EAL-D Collegial Group[59] copy Here is the attached agenda of the presentation.

Here is the PDF attachment to the presentation that Trish Tynan and I created for the IPSHA EAL/D Collegial Group Meeting:

EAL_D Collegial Group – Sept 2022

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.

https://www.education.sa.gov.au/schools-and-educators/curriculum-and-teaching/curriculum-programs/english-additional-language-or-dialect-program

LEAP Recording and tracking sheet Levels 1-6 Oral RecordingTracking sheets

LEAP Recording and tracking sheet

Oral LEAP Recording Template – fillable

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog.

Appreciate your feedback.

Jade

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

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Jade Peartree

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)

Discovering answers to our questions
Exploring ideas, questions and concepts
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.

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.
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.
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)
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.

IPSHA EAL/D Hub Meeting Term 3, 2021

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Jade Peartree

IPSHA EAL/D Hub Meeting

Wednesday 8th September 2021, 1-4pm

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:

Classroom experiences need to build word knowledge and world knowledge.

Implications for students who are English language learners (Crosson et al., 2019)

Expect “uneven” profiles of skills
Vocabulary knowledge is critical- number of words and strength of semantic networks.
Develop metalinguistic knowledge about word parts https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01953/full
Be aware of polysemy in English
Use morphology instruction to reduce the “word learning burden” https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/using-morphology-to-teach-vocabulary/
Apply the same principles of robust, explicit vocabulary instruction that are used for English-speaking students
Remember that being from an EAL background does not preclude the presence of DLD (Developmental Language Disorder)- be curious and seek assessments if need be. DLD info: https://www.childrens.health.qld.gov.au/fact-sheet-developmental-language-disorder/
Explicitly teach the meanings of idioms. Useful resource: https://www.ef-australia.com.au/english-resources/english-idioms/

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.

The Three Tiers of Vocabulary for Classroom Instruction

Semantics Gradient Activity:

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

The Paperbag Princess.docx

Blank template should you wish to have a try or adapt: Copy of Vocabulary Template

I began doing this with the story Wombat Stew as this was a text my students had recently engaged with to learn vocabulary around Australian animals.

Resources to explore:

Targeted Strategies to Accelerate SAE (Standard Australian English) Proficiency: learning-english-achievement-proficiency-leap-targeted-strategies-to-accelerate-sae-proficiency
Writing Revolution: the_hochman_method_09-15-2016-062048
https://www.wordhippo.com/ Great Thesaurus and Word Tools website.

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.

Please leave a comment or feedback.

Thank you

Seesaw Activities

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Jade Peartree

Seesaw Activities

Professional Development at St Andrew’s School

3:45-4:45pm, Wednesday 25 March 2020

3:45-4:45pm Tuesday 18 August & 25 August 2020

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.

Here is a link to my presentation about using Seesaw as a Digital Portfolio from my EdTechSA Conference in 2016: https://jadevidovich.edublogs.org/2016/07/20/edtechsa-conference-2016-seesaw-and-digital-portfolios/

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

Seesaw Icon Shortcuts

Frequently asked questions about using Seesaw and remote or distance learning attached here:

Seesaw: Remote Learning Help

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.

Continue reading →

Multilingual Story Boxes in the Early Childhood Classroom

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Jade Peartree

PETAA: Primary English Teaching Association Australia

Kim Cootes & Dr Gill Pennington

Pembroke Junior School 9:30am-12:30pm Thursday 12 March, 2020

Responding playfully to stories.

I am in my 16th year of teaching now, and with my teaching background and especially after becoming a mother, I know how intrinsic play and playful learning is within children. All children learn through play. Multilingual Story Boxes was the name of the PD I attended on Thursday, I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation, however, this was not the first time I had come across this concept, and I’m sure it won’t be my last.

About 12-13 years ago, my previous primary school suggested “Play Boxes”, which essentially are the same thing as these Multilingual Story Boxes. A box full of books, props, trinkets, toys, costumes, etc. around themes of texts to benefit all learners at whatever stage of development. The teachers loved them, the children loved them and each staff member would add their resources to the boxes after use and share it around. A great concept with fantastic resources, ready for the staff and students to borrow and use.

I was glad to be reminded of this concept at this PD. In my new role as the EALD teacher at St Andrew’s, I often have classroom teachers asking me for resources to support their EAL students. Whilst I have happily shared printed and digital resources, readings and supported students in and out of classes, there just isn’t enough time in my timetable to give these students and teachers enough support! Here is what I took away from this PD:

“What is essential for EALD students is also beneficial for all learners”

If we are providing essential, language rich, playful learning tasks for EAL students this will benefit ALL students in the class. Differentiation is key. Do what you would usually do, and cater for diversity.

As a side note, I am aware that play-based learning is predominantly an early years and junior primary school focus, however, it can and should also be done in the middle and upper primary classes – just pitched at a different level. I taught Year 6 students for three years and was creative in my approach to play based learning, it just looked a little different with older students.

I loved the suggested texts recommended below; some I have used before and others were new to me. It is important for children to see themselves represented in stories and be able to connect with characters. Mirror Books was a term used in the PD, and our teacher librarian (Tracey Billington) had just spoken to staff about books being windows or mirrors for students. A “window” to see into a character’s life and empathise with them, or a “mirror” to see themselves reflected in the book as a character they can relate to.

Recommended Books: Ziba Came on a Boat, Four Feet, Two Sandals & Stepping Stones (Bilingual), My Two Blankets & Handra’s Surprise.

This video clip is of a Reception class that read and explored Handra’s Surprise and recreated the story. It’s wonderful!

Storytelling Resources (Pennington, 2017):

Personal to the teller in the form of memories or events, leading to the development of family stories.
Artefacts to which stories become attached over time.
Printed and online texts, TV programs and movies.
National and cultural myths and histories passed down over generations.
Stories which accompany religious practices and beliefs.

As educators we know the value of storytelling, not just reading books to each other. Storytelling comes from the home, from communities, cultures, families and friends. It is a way of life, connecting with others and making sense of our world. Children should be given the opportunity to tell and share their stories.

The clip below called “Helicopter Stories, Letting Imagination Fly”, was shared at the PD. I think this method of storytelling is fantastic. I majored in Drama at university and have always had a passion for the Arts and expression through performance. This is exactly what students should be doing to explore, create and tell stories. I would also highly recommend using puppets/ puppetry to explore this method.

This is an example of children telling stories in their language. The method involves the teacher recording the student’s story on one page only, then reading their story aloud in a group, allowing the author of the story to act out their story with friends. Love it!

Resources:

www.abbeys.com.au Great website to purchase bilingual books.
Designing Learning for Diverse Classrooms by Paul Dufficy
A Grammar Companion by Beverly Derewianka
The Book Garden: https://thebookgarden.com.au/
Global Language Pty Ltd: https://www.globallanguage.com.au/
Lost in Books: https://www.lostinbooks.com.au/

Attached is the PDF of the PowerPoint from the presentation by Kim Cootes & Dr Gill Pennington. There were many useful pages with resources, references to research and examples of the Multilingual Story Boxes texts and props. Multilingual Storyboxes Adelaide

Where to from here?

My goal after this PD is to create a sample Multilingual Story Box for my school. With the assistance of our teacher librarian, I hope to source a box and add resources to it, then model the process with a selection of Reception and Year 1 classes.
I’d like to share this learning in one of our staff meetings to reinforce the message that “What is essential for EALD students is also beneficial for all learners”. All staff have the skills to cater for our EALD students, they just crave some resources and support, which is completely understandable.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this useful.

Certificate of Participation

English as an Additional Language (EAL) Program

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Jade Peartree

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-7-10 language-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 (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.

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.

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

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Jade Peartree

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?

Trust Yourself
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

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

Jade Peartree's Blog

My professional reflections and documentation

Category Archives: 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.