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.
Two professional learning events for EAL teachers were held with a focus on works in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. These were on 8 and 15 September and took place online. Leah Santilli, Outreach Educator for the NGV, with assistance from her colleagues, Anna Zobel and Lily Feiner (8 September) and Tess Rangelov and Amy Duncan (15 September) showed us some wonderful works and discussed ways that they might be the focus of some engaging lessons with EAL learners, both school aged learners and also adults.
In the first session we saw some amazing shields from the NGV collection that were from various Australian Indigenous peoples. We discussed their creation and usage and looked closely at the patterns, colours and shapes of them, as well as at how they were displayed together in the Gallery. We took part in an activity involving drawing one of the shields that we could see and developing the language to describe it.
We then looked at a couple of works by Australian painter, John Glover: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5631/ & https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/98550/. These works are featured in the NGV’s learning resource titled: Colony to Nation. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/school_resource/colony-to-nation/ . Adaptions of the materials from this learning resource for use with EAL learners were done in 2021 as part of a collaboration between NGV, VicTESOL and Blackburn English Language School.
For the first session, the Gallery staff were in the Ian Potter Centre at NGV Australia in Federation Square and “led us” virtually around the Gallery, showing us the works, and giving us a feel for what was going on – some visitors to the Gallery at the time took interest in what Leah was telling us and tagged along. In the second session, on 15 September, the Gallery staff spoke to us from the NGV International on St Kilda Road. Again, their excellent coordination and camera work gave us a feel of the activity in the Gallery. The focus this time was on more contemporary works: one by Lee Krasner titled Combat https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5213/ and the other, Haystacks at Moret – Morning light https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/4366/ by Alfred Sisley. How we might lead our learners to notice things in these works and the ways that language might be developed around this were discussed with lots of opportunities for participants to make suggestions.
Overall, these two sessions were highly engaging and we thank the staff at NGV, in particular, Leah, for their great work and time in preparing and presenting to VicTESOL members and others. We look forward to future events with NGV.
Please note that this recording will be made available until October 2022 ONLY.
Overview of the Colony to Nation Resources, including EAL adaptations
First Contact: Draw a Shield Activity
See Think Wonder Activity
Compare and Contrast Activity
Changes to Australia’s Environment: Cause and Effect Activity
Please note that this recording will be made available until October 2022 ONLY.
Example Artworks
Questions you can ask about the artworks – Questions allow students to think out loud and elaborate on the ideas and questions of others.
Some teaching ideas and activities from the padlet
Summary
ACTA has been undertaking a series of briefings on the release of the ACTA National Roadmap for EAL/D Education in Schools. ACTA has been concerned for some years at the erosion of specialist English language provision for over 600,000 Indigenous, migrant and refugee students in Australian schools. This erosion is due to Commonwealth devolving all responsibility for EAL/D education to State and Territory governments and these jurisdictions’ school autonomy policies diverting earmarked (Gonski) funding away from EAL/D learner support though flexible, global school budgets.
The Roadmap aims to ‘build back better’ English language and literacy provision for these students. It identifies key national policy problems and proposes solutions through twelve key actions aligned to the directions and initiatives of the National Schools Reform Agreement.
As Australia emerges from the pandemic and re-opens to the world, national leadership is needed to restore our former leading role and rebuild effective English language and literacy provision so that Australia’s English language learners, including its Indigenous learners, can participate successfully in school education and contribute to a cohesive and prosperous multicultural society.
At the online event for academics and researchers working in the field on the 16th of June, leading researchers in the field of TESOL, including Professor Constant Leung from Kings College, discussed the new ACTA National Roadmap for EAL/D Education in Schools.
At the online event for ACTA members on Monday June 20th, Dr Michael Michell encouraged State and Territory associations to contact political parties, representatives and Commonwealth and State and Territory Education Ministers to commit to implementing Roadmap actions.
At the online event for Professional Associations and Key Organisations in the EAL/D space on Monday 18th July, an extremely productive discussion was held with many suggestions for further actions being made.
Other briefings on the Roadmap have been presented to the Victorian and Queensland Council of Deans of Education, and other relevant parties.
Recordings
16 June 2022 – Academics and Researchers
20 June 2022 – ACTA Members
18 July 2022 -Professional Associations and Key Organisations in the EAL/D space
Documents
The Roadmap
Media Release
Summary
The VicTESOL professional learning event ‘Supporting young people from a refugee background in the education system’ offered participants valuable insights into working with refugee-background students. Allison Greene and Madeleine Giummarra from Foundation House (Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture and Trauma) explored identifying and responding to trauma reactions and trauma disclosures with students, and how supports connected to the recovery goals can benefit children and young people. Simone Cassidy and Bojana Popovic from Refugee Minor Program (Dep. of Families, Fairness & Housing) built on this understanding of the refugee experience by walking the audience through a case study, unpacking approaches and strategies that can support and empower young people within the education system. Bojana and Simone guided the group in focussing on how we as educational professionals can work with students as they navigate educational pathways. Allison and Madeleine also addressed the important and often under emphasised topic of self care. They equipped the audience with a picture of what it can look like to become over or under involved within this area of work and how we can aim to achieve a balance in our work with students. This event provided the audience with ideas that they could implement in their schools immediately, thoughts and considerations for future planning, and also ideas about how educational professionals can balance their involvement and be conscious of self care and caring for colleagues within our work. VicTESOL would like to extend their sincere thanks and appreciation to Allison, Madeleine, Simone and Bojana for providing the opportunity for us to reflect on this aspect of our work within education.
Recording
Presentations
Foundation House
Refugee Minor Program
Resources
Foundation House
Refugee Minor Program
Summary In this informative and practical session, Rebekah Jones (Primary Curriculum Leader) and Barbara Dahlsen (Primary Learning Specialist) from Blackburn English Language School walked participants through a range of activities…
On Thursday 19 May, Gurmeet Kaur, the Education Programs Producer at Immigration Museum, shared how the museum’s resources can be best used to engage EAL learners from primary to adult. Gurmeet introduced participants to a range of fantastic resources, both digital and at the museum, including migration stories, cultural stories, objects, timelines and personal stories investigating a myriad of Australian identities. Elsa Brissenden from Bethal Primary School detailed her own experience of taking primary new arrivals students to the museum and how this enhanced a unit of work on identity. Many of the resources highlighted are interactive and enable a high level of engagement. They also provide learners with an opportunity to connect their own story with similar stories of migration to Australia. Participants looked at a range of digital resources and discussed the rich learning opportunities for exploring culture and identity with EAL learners that these resources provide.
Presentation
Don’t forget that teachers are eligible for membership with Museums Victoria. This is a free online subscription service for teachers in Victorian schools and education institutions, as well as homeschool teachers designed to give you easy access to all Museum Victoria museums and education services in order to help you plan school group excursions to our venues.
For more information, go to the Museums Victoria website here.
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!
https://youtu.be/UJ1upapjqXM Thursday November 18, 4-5pm Online Panel Discussion What does effective assessment look like? How do we give feedback that shows students their strengths and assists them to improve? How…
VicTESOL, the state association for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) & Multicultural Education, held our annual Symposium on Tuesday 31 August. This was live online event from 4-5:30pm AEST. For this event, we had a panel of speakers, experts in TESOL and multicultural education and related fields who discussed what they see as implications of the COVID pandemic for the field of teaching English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Victoria and Australia.
They discussed what TESOL might look like in the next few years and in the longer term as a result of what we are currently experiencing. With the pausing and slowing of some programs during the pandemic, is there a chance that TESOL and other programs may change? Is there a chance that while there are no new arrivals that existing programs and services will be affected, not only in the short term, but also in the longer term? How might this look? What might be some of the advantages of possible changes? What might be some less positive consequences of change during and post COVID? What can we do to prepare ourselves for ensuring we maintain and build on the quality of EAL and associated learning and support that has been established over many, many years?
You can view the recording of the event here:
Panelists:
Jessica Bishop, Migrant Information Centre (Eastern Melbourne)
Margaret Corrigan, CEO of Carringbush Adult Education and President of the Australian Council of TESOL associations
Dr Susan Creagh, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Education, The University of Queensland
Associate Professor Russell Cross, Language and Literacy Education, Melbourne Graduate School of Education
Carmel Guerra, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Multicultural Youth
Mark Melican, Principal of Blackburn English Language School
Matt Rodger, Senior Schools Support Officer – RESP Education & Early Years Program Practice & Sector Development, The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture
Chermaine Thomas, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools Ltd (MACS)
The panel was chaired by Dr Shem Macdonald, VicTESOL President and Lecturer at La Trobe University.
To view the collated comments of participants from the registration process, see below. Participants were asked to identify one positive and one negative coming out of their experience of working in the TESOL field during the pandemic. .
During the session there was great engagement in the chat and Q&A. We have collated and edited the responses which can be viewed here:
The recent issue of TESOL in Context contains an editorial related to the topic covered in today’s session. It is referred to within the symposium event.
Teaching and learning English in the age of COVID-19: Reflecting on the state of TESOL in a changed world
To access this, click here:
https://ojs.deakin.edu.au/index.php/tesol/article/view/1427
Many thanks to all who were involved in this event.
A lot of professional learning quite rightly focuses on the global, big-picture ideas of teaching and learning, but what about a small, everyday practice of successful teaching. In this series of vignettes, EAL teachers showcase a single activity, idea or resource that they find to be effective in the EAL classroom, and discuss how and why it works. This vignette is generously contributed from Rosemary Abboud, Dandenong North Primary School. It focuses on an Arrange and Describe activity which she uses with primary-aged EAL students. We thank Rosemary for donating her time and expertise.
There is a wealth of EAL expertise out there! Why not share it with the EAL community? We are keen to showcase this practice of teachers in primary, secondary and adult sectors. If you would like to contribute a vignette about an activity you find to be effective in the classroom, please email plcoordinator[at]victesol.vic.edu.au
Please note that this arrange and describe activity is widely and freely available from a variety of online sources.
