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EAL Teacher Interviews – pre-service teacher resources now available!

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 Hannan, Assistant Principal, Collingwood English Language School – Getting to know your learners

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.

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VCE EAL Resources – ‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

These resources have been created as scaffolding tasks to support initial comprehension through to critical analysis via collaborative meaning-making activities for Units 1 and 3, Outcome 1. Students are encouraged to use both English and their common home language to complete these tasks. It is important to note that these documents are not stand alone supports – they should be used in conjunction with a synopsis, extensive discussion about visuals relating to the time and place as well as a range of graphic organisers and models to scaffold writing. However, the nature of the tasks can be adapted for multiple year levels and cohorts when analysing novels, films or plays that are considered challenging for your EAL/D or low SES and multiculturally diverse learners.  

Resources contributed by April Edwards.

Burial Rites Quiz

Download (DOCX, 21KB)

Class Reading Grid

Download (DOCX, 20KB)

Group Reading Task Example 1

Download (DOCX, 17KB)

Group Reading Task Example 2

Download (DOCX, 20KB)

Theme Task

Download (DOCX, 15KB)

Character Quotes Task

Download (DOCX, 18KB)

Symbolism Task (Class generated)

Download (DOCX, 16KB)

Pre and Post Reading Task

Download (DOCX, 17KB)

ACTA Response: The Department of Home Affairs AMEP Reform Discussion Paper

The Department of Home Affairs has released a Discussion Paper regarding proposed reforms to the AMEP (see below).

ACTA has prepared a response to the AMEP Reform Discussion Paper. Based on the recent forums ACTA has conducted in collaboration with State/Territory associations, we believe that this statement will help members and other organisations in making their submissions to the Department of Home Affairs.

VicTESOL would appreciate your feedback on ACTA’s response to the AMEP Reform Discussion Paper.  Your urgent attention to this matter is therefore needed for us to be effective in this way.  Please send your feedback to victesol [at] victesol.vic.edu.au by Thursday 17th June.

Download (PDF, 628KB)

Download (PDF, 1.34MB)

Download (PDF, 801KB)

The Department of Home Affairs is seeking Expressions of Interest to attend their forum on the Reform of the Adult Migrant English Program

Department of Home Affairs Event

16th & 17th June

The Department of Home Affairs has opened public consultations on a new business model for the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP). The new business model will complement recent legislative reforms that allow more migrants to access the program for longer and until they achieve a higher level of English proficiency.

The Department of Home Affairs (the Department) has released the discussion paper Reform of the Adult Migrant English Program and will undertake a series of forums as part of the consultation process. The paper details the next stage of the reforms, expected to commence in 2023, that aim to generate better quality outcomes for migrants and enable greater access and participation.

The Department will be running two forums for EAL teachers and is accepting Expressions of Interest (EOI) from those who wish to attend:

· AMEP Teachers Forum: Group A – Wednesday 16 June 2021 16:00 – 18:00 AEST

· AMEP Teachers Forum Group B – Thursday 17 June 2021 18:00 – 20:00 AEST

If you are interested in attending one of these forums, please complete the EOI form below and email the form to amepdesign@homeaffairs.gov.au.

Calendar invitations will be sent out once EOIs have been finalised.

Please note that the forums above have limited capacity. If allocations for the forums are exceeded, the Department can look into running additional forums at a later date.

Further information about these stakeholder consultations can be found here.

Enquiries about the stakeholder consultations should also be directed to the AMEP Design mailbox.

AMEP Design
Migrant English and Language Services Branch | Refugee, Humanitarian and Settlement Division
Immigration and Settlement Services Group
Department of Home Affairs
E: AMEPdesign@homeaffairs.gov.au

Department of Home Affairs EOI form:

Download (PDF, 204KB)

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Online Resourcing and Networking session for pre-service, early-career EAL teachers and teachers new to EAL

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.

 

Download (PDF, 3.56MB)

 

Some suggested resource links from participants in this session included:

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Motivating Learners in the Language Classroom

Mairin Hennebry-Leung & Xuesong (Andy) Gao

Wednesday 19 May, 4-5:30 pm (AEST)

Online Webinar

As most language teachers know, motivation is a vital component of effective language learning. Without it, teachers’ careful planning and creative ideas can quickly be undermined. The research supports this view and finds that motivation can predict anything up to 33% of language learning success. Yet, there is still much we need to understand about motivation in the language classroom. In this talk, we will share insights gathered from a large-scale study conducted among Hong Kong school learners of English.

Two key components of the language learning experience are the teacher and the language environment; we’ll examine what the findings of the study tell us about how teachers’ practices and the language of instruction impact on students’ motivation. A key focus will be on the way in which different features of the language learning experience can lead to a more or less agentive motivation, in other words motivation that is more driven by the student than by the teacher or parents and particularly a motivational orientation more closely tied with a second language identity. We will explore possible explanations for these relationships between classroom features and agentive or less-agentive motivational orientations. Together we will examine what this means for classroom practice and for shaping classrooms that promote and sustain motivated language learning, broadening the discussion to other instructional contexts and drawing on participants’ classroom experience. Through sharing of experiences (good and not so good!) of and challenges and opportunities for generating and sustaining students’ motivation, as well as drawing on relevant theory and research, we will identify key guiding principles of effective motivational language teaching practice.

The talk will be interactive, meaning that participants will be encouraged to share their reactions, reflections and experiences. In order to enrich the conversation, participants will be invited to share specific examples of practice in their diverse contexts. Pause-for-talk moments and breakout rooms will be used to facilitate these conversations.

Mairin Hennebry-Leung started her career teaching Modern Languages and TESOL in a variety of contexts. She joined the University of Tasmania as Lecturer in Languages and TESOL in 2020, prior to which she has held posts in Hong Kong, Scotland and England, working in language education and language teacher education. In addition to this, Mairin has delivered professional development events and materials for teachers in France, Spain, China, Hong Kong and across the UK. Her research focusses on classroom language learning, specifically on language learning motivation, language teacher education, and the relationship between language teaching and citizenship development. Mairin has published widely in international journals including TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, and Language Learning Journal. She is a co-editor of System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics and co-editor of the Edinburgh University Press Textbooks in Applied Linguistics.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is an associate professor at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia. He has been involved in language teacher education in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy, and language teacher education. His research has been funded by Research Grants Council (Hong Kong), Sumitomo Foundation (Japan), and the Standing Committee for Language Education and Research (Hong Kong). He has published widely in international journals, including ELT Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Modern Language Journal, and Teaching and Teacher Education. He is a co-editor of System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics and co-editor of the English Language Education book series, published by Springer.

Download (PDF, 772KB)

Here is the reading recommended in the chat function by Mairin during the session:

Chenjing (Julia) You, Zoltán Dörnyei, Language Learning Motivation in China: Results of a Large-Scale Stratified Survey, Applied Linguistics, Volume 37, Issue 4, August 2016, Pages 495–519, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu046

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Supporting EAL students in Inquiry-based Learning

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.

Click here to access the resources used in the group activity.

Download (PDF, 10.13MB)