Summary to come
This in-class teaching and learning task provides an opportunity for students to explore and communicate their linguistic identities and language practices and the role these play in shaping their experiences as language learners.
Presentation PDF: Knowing who you are: Heritage language, identity and safe space in a bilingual kindergarten, Dr Kerry Taylor-Leech and Dr Eseta Tualaulelei
Editors: Dr Yvette Slaughter, Dr Anne Keary, Dr Gillian Pennington, Dr Gary Bonar
The special early childhood edition of TESOL in Context was launched via a webinair on Thursday May 5th. The launch highlighted the wide range of work being undertaken into pedagogical and policy practices that see multilingualism (including home languages, English as an additional language and additional languages) as lived and dynamic.
An outline was given of the work of Prof Shelley Stagg Peterson, Yvette Manitowabi, and Jacinta Manitowabi who in their paper discuss The Niichii Project: Revitalizing Indigenous Language in Northern Canada.
Assoc Prof Caroline Cohrssen on behalf of the research team including herself, Dr Yvette Slaughter and Dr Edith Nicolas presented on Leveraging Languages for Learning: Incorporating Plurilingual Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education and Care. Assoc Prof Jane Page and Assoc Prof Janet Scull presented on behalf of the project team on their study into Mothers as First Teachers: Exploring the Features of Mother child Interactions That Support Young Aboriginal Children’s Multilingual Learning at Playgroup. The final presentation was about Knowing Who You Are: Heritage Language, Identity and Safe Space in a Bilingual Kindergarten which was presented by Dr Kerry Taylor-Leech and Dr Eseta Tualaulelei.
The presentations raised key questions about how to grow strong social and cultural identities of children. The importance of children participating in early childhood programs that engage with the rich repertoires of languages of families and communities was a key take away message from this sharing of research in this emerging field.
Dr Julie Choi and Ms Kailin Liu presented a session on 24 March entitled: Enacting translation and translanguaging collaboratively between teachers and learners for knowledge building. In this session they prompted us to consider translation and translanguaging as a collaboration and explained that this can take place on a number of levels. Talking about it in relation to learning, we were shown texts in which there were examples of a number of translation strategies used by learners. One was a reading text, where students had not only written words they had translated in the margins, but had also made notes about their translations of larger concepts that appeared within the texts. They also showed us a student notebook explaining that these kinds of texts are intricate spaces where we can observe students and the ways they use translation. They demonstrated that translation isn’t simply a case of converting a word or phrase from Language Code A to Language Code B but is a more complex process involving moving back and forth between languages to find the best fit for meaning. As I understood, this is where translation engages with translanguaging whereby learners and other plurilinguals bring to the fore their knowledge of all languages, or their combined language repertoire, in order to make meaning.
The presenters emphasised the value of collaborative dialogue in which speakers “[engage] in problem solving and knowledge building” (Swain, 2000) involving negotiation of meaning and knowledge building. They then shared with us their own experiences of collaborative dialogue that they themselves had engaged in as part of exploring a language translation issue related to the word “besides” – a vocabulary item in English often inappropriately used by students in their writing.
The session was highly engaging and informative and offered many practical ideas for teachers for working collaboratively with language learners to explore and develop skills in translation and translanguaging. Thank you Julie and Kailin!
Dr Anne Keary has generously shared a number of recordings used in the education of pre-service primary school teachers at Monash University.
They cover topics including advice for planning and programing, getting to know learners, behaviour management and how schools have adapted to remote learning.
Michelle Andrews, EAL Teacher Preston North East Primary – Planning
Michelle shares with us an insight into the planning of teachers at Preston North East Primary School. She shows the viewer her school’s Individual Learning Improvement Plan document, highlighting the importance of setting goals and planning lessons in a way that involves students and families.
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Mairead discusses the processes in place for getting to know newly-arrived students at Collingwood English Language school. She takes the viewer through the student profile documents used, highlighting information that can be useful to gather, such as: socio-lingual context, language background, visa codes, nationality, cultural group, position in family, siblings, religion, prior learning, settlement services involvement, and well-being. Mairead also reflects on the need for teachers to not assume anything about their learners and emphasises the need to ask questions to get as good a picture of the student’s prior learning as possible.
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Rosemary Abboud, Dandenong North Primary School, Developing Programs
Rosemary describes the range of programs running at Dandenong High School, including the EAL program and the transition program.
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David Rothstadt, Principal, Noble Park Primary School
David talks about how he and the staff at Noble Park Primary School have adapted to remote learning over the last 18 months. He highlights the flexibility and sheer hard work of teachers to get online programs up and running in a short amount of time, and how teachers supported each other in the transition. David concludes that one of his key learnings from these uncertain times is that the value of face-to-face teacher/student relationships cannot be underestimated or replaced by technologies.
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Various Presenters on Behaviour Management (edited version)
VicTESOL acknowledges and thanks the Faculty of Education, Monash University, for providing these videos.
Thursday 3 June, 2021, 4-5pm
Online Event – Presentation and Conversation Rooms
This was an opportunity for teachers who are at a similar stage of their careers to share practice with teachers from other schools and institutions. A big part of this session was EAL resource sharing with Jennifer Peck from the Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC) and and Eileen Wan (Blackburn English Language School). They presented on LMERC’s online and physical resources. This session was for pre-service teachers and early-career teachers (0-2 years) of EAL students, and teachers who are new to teaching EAL students.
Click here to access LMERC’s website.
Some suggested resource links from participants in this session included:
Wednesday 5 May, 3:45-4:45pm
Online Event
Once upon a time, a good learner was one who could just recall and repeat knowledge. However, in contemporary education we expect learners to do so much more – to locate, evaluate, articulate and create information individually or collaboratively. Reflecting this, Inquiry-based Learning (IBL) has become a popular pedagogical approach in Australian schools. Yet IBL presents unique challenges for EAL/D learners due to the complex language demands involved in problem solving and higher order thinking, as well as those required to work cooperatively with others. This workshop explored how to help EAL students participate and engage in IBL through effective planning and targeted teaching strategies that scaffold understanding, organisation and expression of ideas.
Following 14 years as a NAATI accredited translator then tertiary Spanish lecturer, April Edwards went on to gain a Master of Teaching as an EAL/D and English secondary teacher. She later took on roles as an EAL Coordinator, EAL specialist mentor to English teachers and Teaching and Learning lead teacher. She is currently training undergraduate and postgraduate pre-service teachers in the School of Education at La Trobe University as well as having worked as an EAL consultant to both the DET and the VCAA. April thrives on sharing her knowledge about 1st and 2nd language acquisition with colleagues and students alike. She does so in the belief that when Culturally and Linguistically Diverse students are supported to use their whole linguistic and cultural repertoire they can participate fully in any classroom setting.
Michelle Andrews is a Primary EAL specialist, currently coordinating the EAL program at Preston North East Primary School. Before moving to the mainstream in 2017, she worked for many years in the New Arrivals Program at Blackburn ELS, taking on a variety of roles including student wellbeing coordinator and Primary curriculum leader. She is passionate about supporting English Language learners to engage, learn and thrive in Australian schools.
The VicTESOL early childhood education series focuses on families and communities as a resource for growing and strengthening the development of bi/multilingual children.
The series engages with key Australian early childhood documents and frameworks including the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) and the recently released VCAA resource Supporting Bilingualism, Multilingualism and Language Learning in the Early Years.
This series is made possible through a generous grant from The Foundation of Graduates in Early Childhood Studies at AGECS.
Click here to access the resources, videos and recordings from the keynote presentations (Feb-April 2021).
This series of professional learning events is a result of collaboration between staff from the Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC), the School Libraries Association of Victoria (SLAV), Stella Schools, and VicTESOL.
About the Organisers:
The School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) offers dynamic and inspiring opportunities for teacher-librarians and library teams to build their essential role in engaging and developing lifelong learners. Through leadership, advocacy and collegiality and an extensive professional learning and publications program.
Stella is an organisation that champions cultural change through recognising, elevating and celebrating Australian women’s writing. It includes the annual Stella Prize award for women’s writing, the Stella Count, which examines gender bias in book reviewing and Stella Schools, which develops programs that seek to inspire and empower young people to find their own creative voices, challenge stereotypes and imagine a future not limited by their gender.
https://thestellaprize.com.au/
The Languages & Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC) is for educators across all sectors K-12. LMERC provides resources in the areas of English as an Additional Language (EAL), Languages other than English, the Intercultural Capability and the cross curriculum priorities areas of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Sustainability. The library holds an extensive collection of over 25,000 resources in all formats for educators across all sectors and at all levels, early childhood to adult. Library membership is available free to teachers from these educational settings: early childhood centres (in receipt of government funding), schools F-12 across all sectors, pre-service teachers and lecturers (in the areas of EAL and languages), homework clubs and community language schools. Home school parents, teachers of adults and community workers in education roles are also welcome to join.
https://lmerc.softlinkhosting.com.au/oliver/home/news
Finding culturally diverse literature:
Stella has a couple of wonderful resources to support your text selection around gender diversity and writing from the intersection. If you would like to know more you can contact Lenny Robinson: schools [at] thestellaprize.com.au and visit https://thestellaprize.com.au/.
Auditing and Selection:
Wider reading:
Suggestions:
In part 2, we discussed possible ways to audit your current text lists or collections, and give resource recommendations for you to consider introducing at your school or institution.
Jennifer Peck took participants through the resources available through LMERC, including lists of culturally diverse texts.
Stella Schools Manager Lenny Robinson introduced the audience to two resources developed by Stella Schools to support diversity in text selection: The Read Up Reading Guide, developed in partnership with the Victorian Government, and the Stella Sparks Reading Guide, one of several resources included in their Resource Kit for Stella Sparks schools program.
We then split into groups facilitated by SLAV and LMERC librarians who took participants through some resource recommendations. This part of the session was not recorded.
Jennifer Peck’s presentation:
Lenny Robinson- Stella Schools Manager:
LMERC text lists:
Group Presentation Resources:
https://padlet.com/grassr/2qvzrijrajxkn8nm
Participants were asked to read the article ‘Assessing and selecting culturally diverse literature for the classroom’ by Helen Adam and Laurie Harper (2016) prior to attending this professional learning event. The article can be accessed by clicking here.
Adam, H., & Harper, L. (2016). Assessing and selecting culturally diverse literature for the classroom. Retrieve from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/1892
In this workshop, Dr Sue Ollerhead discussed the important role that students’ home languages play in their classroom learning. She explored the rationale for using translanguaging as a pedagogical approach…
