Summary to come
LWA were pleased to share a table with LMERC (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre) at the VicTESOL Symposium on Friday 11th November 2022. It was great to showcase with LMERC resources that related to second language acquisition and language teaching methodology for all levels, from early years to adults.
The AMEP 3 new resources: the English Ready Booklets, AMEPOnline, and the Digital Literacies Framework, Guide, and companion Teaching Resources were of great interest to symposium participants and the participants are looking forward to their publication on the Australian Department of Home Affairs website (Adult Migrant English Program page).
The Symposium provided me with a wonderful opportunity to meet so many EAL educators and the sessions were very informative. Being new to LMERC, I enjoyed chatting about what we provide and what is important to you. We appreciate any suggestions/recommendations for resources.
LMERC is a specialist resource centre for educators across all sectors with both digital and physical resources to support EAL teaching and learning. This includes academic and practical teacher resources; culturally inclusive fiction and non-fiction; games and storytelling kits and realia (puppets, masks, clothes and toys).
We regularly provide bi-lingual dictionaries and picture books, readers and other resources to support your students in schools across Victoria. If you need any resources, you can visit us in Carlton, email for suggestions or look through our catalogue and request items. We have a growing collection of ebooks and audio books that you can access through the catalogue.
We send a newsletter once a term with information about our new resources, professional learning opportunities and relevant articles. Please email if you would like to receive the newsletter.
Telephone: (03) 9349 1418
Catalogue: lmerc.softlinkhosting.com.au
Opening hours: weekdays 9am-5pm, including school holidays
How to Join LMERC and select Register in the top right-hand corner
Following the keynote video presentation and panel discussion, symposium participants broke into four groups to unpack the ideas and concepts presented. This acted a teacher-sharing and networking session, facilitated by VicTESOL committee members, where participants worked in small, multi-sectorial groups to discuss their learnings and how this applied to their context.
Groups captured their discussion using a shared Padlet page, guided by the following questions:
1) What’s the role of EAL teachers in your setting?
2) What is specific to your sector and what do you share with other sectors?
3) Was there anything that surprised you about what is happening in other sectors?
4) How can knowledge about other sectors
• help us support students who are transitioning to or from our sector?
• inspire us?
• inform our broad knowledge of TESOL?
• understand ourselves and our own sector?
After the Padlet activity, the small groups then reported back to the facilitator and larger group, which enabled a rich discussion that drew on a wealth of experience and knowledge. It was a valuable opportunity to explore and celebrate the similarities and differences across early childhood, primary, secondary and adult sectors, within local, state, national and international contexts. The aim is that this session will lead to the development of a shared resource, which will be published on the VicTESOL website. VicTESOL extends their gratitude to the participants for sharing their expertise and experience and their contributions to this resource.
The symposium kicked off with an engaging panel discussion facilitated by Assoc Prof Russel Cross in response to the keynote presentation by Prof Ben Rampton and Dr Mel Cooke. Panel members from the primary, secondary, Catholic and adult sectors shared their insights on the role of EAL teachers in their setting, how much EAL teachers have in common across settings, how policy and curriculum shape the work of EAL teachers and what the important aspects are of an EAL teachers’ role in different settings. The discussion illuminated a shared passion across all sectors for the holistic needs of EAL learners and the unique and privileged role that EAL teachers play in the lives of learners that goes far beyond curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. The panel ended with thematic conclusions from Ben and Mel, who had watched the discussion via zoom from the UK.
In their session “Impacts of Trauma on Learning and Behaviour”, Allison Greene and Matt Roger from Foundation House presented insight into the practical strategies and theories to support students impacted by refugee experiences. Allison and Matt began by providing some of the theory around refugee trauma and then invited participants to investigate 2 fictional case studies of students from refugee backgrounds. In small groups, teachers discussed some of the concerns that were evident relating to the students’ learning, engagement and behaviour and then shared some possible strategies to support them in their transition to Australian schooling.
The provision of knowledge and practical examples provided by Allison and Matt, along with the reflective discussion, assisted educators to develop their trauma informed lens. The session allowed for participants to explore connections between trauma reactions and supportive responses, and consider how our various educational settings can be a restorative space for students and families from refugee backgrounds. Participants in the session were given some excellent resources to take away which included further strategies and support for teachers when dealing with students’ trauma reactions and disclosures. For further information, resources and professional learning educators can visit the Foundation House website at https://foundationhouse.org.au/.
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!
