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 […]

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 […]

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 that they use to assess the language level of newly arrived students. They explained how the tasks are administered and differentiated according to student responses,...

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 […]

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 […]

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 is assessment practice changing to meet current research? In this session, we looked at the big and small questions about assessment and reporting as it applies...

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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% […]

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 […]

Jacky Springall Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Workshop   This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility.  The session gave a brief overview of the different...

Wednesday 28 October, 4-5pm Panel Discussion and Q&A Laurence Guttmann, Rosemary Abboud, Margaret Corrigan, and Julia Lippold Some resources that were shared within this session: Carringbush Education teacher training videos which are available at: https://www.carringbush.org.au/resources Foundation House: https://sifr.foundationhouse.org.au/ and https://foundationhouse.org.au/  There is an upcoming Calendar Professional Learning Session ‘Introduction to the Refugee Experience/Schools in for […]

LMERC information can be accessed by clicking here.  Find out about the collection, services, loan periods and instructions for joining.   This presentation was delivered by Jenny Peck at the LMERC Resourcing and Networking Event on Thursday 15th October 2020. Jenny Peck has prepared a resource sheet in response to some of the questions raised by the […]

Stories are powerful. They shape the way we think about the world, ourselves and each other. The stories we choose to present to students at school, as teachers and librarians, profoundly affect how students perceive the world and their place in it. We want to help you choose culturally diverse resources that reflect students’ diverse […]

Tuesday 8th September 2020 If you expect to work with EAL/D learners in your teaching career, then you will want to be familiar with the EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In this webinar, Jenny went through some of the thinking behind the document and showed how it can serve teachers both […]

Julia Lippold, Lauriston Girls School Thursday 30 July 2020 Online webinar     ‘Students working things out for themselves.’ This principle is at the heart of Julia Lippold’s approach to teaching grammar. Julia started the session by explaining why teaching grammar is important and the challenges of teaching grammar, before explaining why she uses a...

Yan Yao Choong, Department of Education and Training Wednesday 12 August, 4:00-5:00pm Click here to access the literacy toolkit: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/Pages/default.aspx Click here to the literacy toolkit map: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/literacy-teaching-toolkit-map-v4.pdf The Literacy Teaching Toolkit provides practical advice and high impact teaching practices to improve student outcomes in reading, writing and speaking and listening. In 2019, the Foundation […]

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

This session was a practical workshop to assist teachers to modify programs and scaffold learning to assist EAL students to access the Victorian Curriculum across all subject areas. Participants learnt about engaging EAL learners, scaffolding essential vocabulary and making appropriate modifications to learning and assessment tasks. The session began with a short presentation from Ruth […]

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

EAL information for schools is outlined on the Department website at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/diversity/eal/Pages/default.aspx Click here to access information relating to: New EAL curriculum Students Schools Teachers Program planning Assessment and reporting EAL in Victorian government schools  

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

To download an edited PDF of powerpoint: To download the resource links page: Victoria Butterfield, Voula MacKenzie, Heena Sharma, Panayiota Kai The Virtual EAL New Arrivals Program of the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) Tuesday 28 April, 4-5pm Online Webinar Are you faced with the challenge of teaching your EAL students online during the COVID-19 […]

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Professor Rhonda Oliver, Curtin University Monday 28 October, 7-8pm (Australian Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time) Australian Aboriginal people interact in diverse ways and this is especially the case for those who grow up and live in rural and remote locations. In such locations Standard Australian English (SAE) is often not spoken as the residents’ first […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Steven delivered a hands on and engaging workshop where participants learned about the idea of using gestures to teach new vocabulary to EAL students. He spoke about the connection between speech and gestures and in this workshop. Among other things, participants experienced learning a new language using gestures to represent […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 In this inspiring presentation, Carolyn shared her experience and insights into supporting newly arrived migrants and refugees in a school setting. She began with a look at what constitutes an “I can” rather than an “I can’t” mindset, then outlined ideas about how to gather information, value stories and build […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Fiona, Brooke and Susan spoke about the teaching and learning cycle that they use with their EAL students following participation in Margaret Nutbean’s intensive TYCEMC workshops. Participants were able to see how ideas from the workshop were modified to meet the learning needs of the EAL students in their setting. […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Kate Plant demonstrated how she works with the teachers in Newbury Primary School to set up a program that places student wellbeing at the forefront to provide an optimum learning environment for the EAL students in her school. She discussed using strategies such as using standard visual displays across the […]

  https://www.digitalliteracies.info/   This toolkit has been developed as part of the 2016 VicTESOL Research Grant project Improving refugee students’ access to digital literacies: integrating transmedia storytelling in an EAL (Year 7) classroom.  The project aimed to develop and disseminate a web-based toolkit for EAL practitioners consisting of a flexible framework and a set of […]

Greg Gow, Program Coordinator, Schools Support Program & Matt Rodger, Schools Support Officer West Region, Schools Support Program ‘School is where you need to be equal and learn’: Insights from students of refugee backgrounds on learning and engagement in Victorian secondary schools (2019) This report presents the findings of a research project conducted by the […]

  Michelle Andrews, Giuliana Mecoli & Rebekah Jones de Villagran VicTESOL assembled a panel of experts in primary school EAL teaching to answer your questions, offer advice and support, and discuss best practice in primary school EAL teaching. In this online Q&A session, Michelle, Giuliana and Rebekah tailored their discussion around your specific needs. They […]

VicTESOL’s Teaching and Learning Cycle project, launched in 2018, was made possible by the generous support of a Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) Common Funding Agreement (CFA). VicTESOL has also contributed to this project. VicTESOL enlisted the specialist Prof Beverly Derewianka, an expert in EAL and mainstream language education and literacy, to work […]

The TEAL project, launched in 2015, is an online resource for teachers of primary and secondary level students who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Australia. It brings together a range of tools and advice for the assessment and reporting of the English language proficiency and progress of students within an ‘assessment […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

Penny Newton & Lynne Dyer  

April Edwards

Robyn Babaeff

Jan Molloy & Liz Suda

Panel Discussion Building Communities Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Dr Howard Nicholas Engaging with Theories of Language  

Associate Professor Misty Adoniou Thinking Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Professor Joe Lo Bianco Language Teachers and Language Planners: Leadership Possibilities from Classroom to Policy Forum  

An interesting article written by Sally Baker & Georgina Ramsay, both of the University of Newcastle, on The Conversation.

A whole school approach to improving the assessment of EAL students Tools for Enhancing Assessment Literacy for Teachers of EAL (TEAL) is an online resource that brings together a range of tools, strategies and assessment advice for teachers of EAL learners in P – 10. Putting TEAL into Practice is designed to build on and […]

Amalia Fawcett, Hanya Senjov & Dr Kirsten Hutchison

The Mercy Connect volunteer program recruits, trains and supports volunteers to assist school students and their families settle in Australia.

CMY has revamped its comprehensive resource kit to help teachers and other school staff be more culturally aware and welcoming to multicultural families.

The video recording of the TEAL Webinar, presented by VicTESOL, is now available for Members.

The EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers has been endorsed by AITSL and is available for use.

Kylie Wilkinson, Siobhan Hannan, Sam Ward & Aisha Shorrock

Dr Naarah Sawers...

Sally Humphrey

Shem Macdonald

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Copy of Presentation Summary A wonderfully thorough and informative presentation about the changes to the new English/EAL Study Design was offered by Kellie Heintz from the EAL Division of the VCAA. She began with an important reminder of the eligibility criteria and Special Circumstances that determine whether students can be assessed in Units 3 & […]

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 […]

The VCAA Chief Assessor for VCE EAL, Glynis Rose, and Assistant Chief Assessors, Rosemary McLoughlin, Jenna Gomes and Michael E Daniel, presented an overview of the 2021 VCE EAL exam. Glynis and Rosemary detailed what the assessors are looking for in each section of the exam and provided suggestions for how we can best prepare...

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 is assessment practice changing to meet current research? In this session, we looked at the big and small questions about assessment and reporting as it applies...

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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% […]

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 […]

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 16 February 2021, 4-5:30pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2020 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

Stephanie Georgiou & Maddy Oh Tuesday 9 February, 4-5:30 pm Online Event Presenters: Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching EAL. She has worked in the adult, Catholic and government sectors, continuing her ongoing tenure at the Department of Education and Training. She has managed and coordinated multiple programmes throughout her...

Jacky Springall Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Workshop   This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility.  The session gave a brief overview of the different...

Wednesday 28 October, 4-5pm Panel Discussion and Q&A Laurence Guttmann, Rosemary Abboud, Margaret Corrigan, and Julia Lippold Some resources that were shared within this session: Carringbush Education teacher training videos which are available at: https://www.carringbush.org.au/resources Foundation House: https://sifr.foundationhouse.org.au/ and https://foundationhouse.org.au/  There is an upcoming Calendar Professional Learning Session ‘Introduction to the Refugee Experience/Schools in for […]

LMERC information can be accessed by clicking here.  Find out about the collection, services, loan periods and instructions for joining.   This presentation was delivered by Jenny Peck at the LMERC Resourcing and Networking Event on Thursday 15th October 2020. Jenny Peck has prepared a resource sheet in response to some of the questions raised by the […]

Stories are powerful. They shape the way we think about the world, ourselves and each other. The stories we choose to present to students at school, as teachers and librarians, profoundly affect how students perceive the world and their place in it. We want to help you choose culturally diverse resources that reflect students’ diverse […]

Online Presentations and Discussion Rooms, Tuesday 6 October, 4-5:30 pm Naomi Weiler, Stephanie Georgiou, and Maria Papasotiriou Are you preparing students for the VCE EAL exam? Get ideas and strategies from three experienced EAL teachers and join us afterwards for small group discussions. Presenters Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching […]

Tuesday 8th September 2020 If you expect to work with EAL/D learners in your teaching career, then you will want to be familiar with the EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In this webinar, Jenny went through some of the thinking behind the document and showed how it can serve teachers both […]

Julia Lippold, Lauriston Girls School Thursday 30 July 2020 Online webinar     ‘Students working things out for themselves.’ This principle is at the heart of Julia Lippold’s approach to teaching grammar. Julia started the session by explaining why teaching grammar is important and the challenges of teaching grammar, before explaining why she uses a...

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

This session was a practical workshop to assist teachers to modify programs and scaffold learning to assist EAL students to access the Victorian Curriculum across all subject areas. Participants learnt about engaging EAL learners, scaffolding essential vocabulary and making appropriate modifications to learning and assessment tasks. The session began with a short presentation from Ruth […]

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

EAL information for schools is outlined on the Department website at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/diversity/eal/Pages/default.aspx Click here to access information relating to: New EAL curriculum Students Schools Teachers Program planning Assessment and reporting EAL in Victorian government schools  

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

To download an edited PDF of powerpoint: To download the resource links page: Victoria Butterfield, Voula MacKenzie, Heena Sharma, Panayiota Kai The Virtual EAL New Arrivals Program of the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) Tuesday 28 April, 4-5pm Online Webinar Are you faced with the challenge of teaching your EAL students online during the COVID-19 […]

Listening skills are ones we all employ, both passively and actively, but how do we teach and evaluate them as part of VCE EAL assessment? In this session you will consider how to develop and embed valid EAL listening assessment into every outcome of Units 1-4 through the completion and analysis of an existing assessment […]

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Have you been allocated VCE EAL for the first time in 2020? Would you like some guidance and support from three experienced EAL teachers who have been in your shoes before? Julia, Deborah and Rebecca joined forces to bring their extensive EAL teaching experience to VicTESOL members and guests with the aim of providing practical […]

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 11 February, 4-5:30 pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2019 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

Professor Rhonda Oliver, Curtin University Monday 28 October, 7-8pm (Australian Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time) Australian Aboriginal people interact in diverse ways and this is especially the case for those who grow up and live in rural and remote locations. In such locations Standard Australian English (SAE) is often not spoken as the residents’ first […]

Elena Di Mascolo & Liaqat Gulzari Dandenong High School Wednesday 4 September, 4-5pm In this workshop, Elena and Liaqat shared their experiences establishing and implementing specialised programs for recently-arrived EAL students in a culturally-diverse secondary school setting, from Year 7-10. They explained the features of the various academic and non-academic programs, including both embedded and […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Steven delivered a hands on and engaging workshop where participants learned about the idea of using gestures to teach new vocabulary to EAL students. He spoke about the connection between speech and gestures and in this workshop. Among other things, participants experienced learning a new language using gestures to represent […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Jodie Whitehurst took us on a captivating journey during her interactive workshop “Using drama techniques in the teaching of adult EAL” by inviting us to participate in several authentic drama-based activities. The room was filled with a sense of excitement and trust and the participants transformed into the learners who […]

Matt Rodger and Greg Gow from Foundation House introduced the Schools Support Program that their organisation provides. They then explained the research project and resulting report: School is where you need to be equal and learn. Gaining insights from students of refugee backgrounds was the aim of this project. Greg and Matt described how this […]

  https://www.digitalliteracies.info/   This toolkit has been developed as part of the 2016 VicTESOL Research Grant project Improving refugee students’ access to digital literacies: integrating transmedia storytelling in an EAL (Year 7) classroom.  The project aimed to develop and disseminate a web-based toolkit for EAL practitioners consisting of a flexible framework and a set of […]

Mei French, Ashima Suri and Rita Alexander In multicultural and multilingual school contexts, it is beneficial for all teachers to develop strong intercultural relationship skills and understand the role of multilingualism in the classroom in order to support English learning across the curriculum. As colleagues in a South Australian secondary school, Mei, Ashima, and Rita, […]

Greg Gow, Program Coordinator, Schools Support Program & Matt Rodger, Schools Support Officer West Region, Schools Support Program ‘School is where you need to be equal and learn’: Insights from students of refugee backgrounds on learning and engagement in Victorian secondary schools (2019) This report presents the findings of a research project conducted by the […]

...

Powerpoint Presentation: Worksheets: A guide to using quotations – 6 Apr 18 (1) Character profile – Brooks – Anna – add quotes -20 May 19 Character profile – ‘Brooks – Elinor- add quotes -20 May 19 Comparative Table – Miller & Brooks – Motives – Focussed on conflict- May 17 Comparative Essay – Scaffold- 24 […]

VicTESOL’s Teaching and Learning Cycle project, launched in 2018, was made possible by the generous support of a Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) Common Funding Agreement (CFA). VicTESOL has also contributed to this project. VicTESOL enlisted the specialist Prof Beverly Derewianka, an expert in EAL and mainstream language education and literacy, to work […]

The TEAL project, launched in 2015, is an online resource for teachers of primary and secondary level students who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Australia. It brings together a range of tools and advice for the assessment and reporting of the English language proficiency and progress of students within an ‘assessment […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

Faculty Research Webinar – October, 2016 (Dunwoodie, Webb, Wilkinson)

Penny Newton & Lynne Dyer  

April Edwards

Jan Molloy & Liz Suda

Panel Discussion Building Communities Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Dr Howard Nicholas Engaging with Theories of Language  

Associate Professor Misty Adoniou Thinking Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Professor Joe Lo Bianco Language Teachers and Language Planners: Leadership Possibilities from Classroom to Policy Forum  

A whole school approach to improving the assessment of EAL students Tools for Enhancing Assessment Literacy for Teachers of EAL (TEAL) is an online resource that brings together a range of tools, strategies and assessment advice for teachers of EAL learners in P – 10. Putting TEAL into Practice is designed to build on and […]

Melanie Reynolds, Alexandra Vardis, Kellie Mason & David Kezilas...

Amalia Fawcett, Hanya Senjov & Dr Kirsten Hutchison

The Mercy Connect volunteer program recruits, trains and supports volunteers to assist school students and their families settle in Australia.

CMY has revamped its comprehensive resource kit to help teachers and other school staff be more culturally aware and welcoming to multicultural families.

Units 3 and 4 of the revised VCE English as an Additional Language (EAL) will be implemented from 2017.

The video recording of the TEAL Webinar, presented by VicTESOL, is now available for Members.

The EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers has been endorsed by AITSL and is available for use.

Elizabeth Buckley...

Dr Naarah Sawers...

Sally Humphrey

Shem Macdonald

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 […]

Copy of Presentation Summary A wonderfully thorough and informative presentation about the changes to the new English/EAL Study Design was offered by Kellie Heintz from the EAL Division of the VCAA. She began with an important reminder of the eligibility criteria and Special Circumstances that determine whether students can be assessed in Units 3 & […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 16 February 2021, 4-5:30pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2020 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

Stephanie Georgiou & Maddy Oh Tuesday 9 February, 4-5:30 pm Online Event Presenters: Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching EAL. She has worked in the adult, Catholic and government sectors, continuing her ongoing tenure at the Department of Education and Training. She has managed and coordinated multiple programmes throughout her...

Jacky Springall Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Workshop   This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility.  The session gave a brief overview of the different...

Stories are powerful. They shape the way we think about the world, ourselves and each other. The stories we choose to present to students at school, as teachers and librarians, profoundly affect how students perceive the world and their place in it. We want to help you choose culturally diverse resources that reflect students’ diverse […]

Online Presentations and Discussion Rooms, Tuesday 6 October, 4-5:30 pm Naomi Weiler, Stephanie Georgiou, and Maria Papasotiriou Are you preparing students for the VCE EAL exam? Get ideas and strategies from three experienced EAL teachers and join us afterwards for small group discussions. Presenters Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching […]

Tuesday 8th September 2020 If you expect to work with EAL/D learners in your teaching career, then you will want to be familiar with the EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In this webinar, Jenny went through some of the thinking behind the document and showed how it can serve teachers both […]

Julia Lippold, Lauriston Girls School Thursday 30 July 2020 Online webinar     ‘Students working things out for themselves.’ This principle is at the heart of Julia Lippold’s approach to teaching grammar. Julia started the session by explaining why teaching grammar is important and the challenges of teaching grammar, before explaining why she uses a...

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

EAL information for schools is outlined on the Department website at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/diversity/eal/Pages/default.aspx Click here to access information relating to: New EAL curriculum Students Schools Teachers Program planning Assessment and reporting EAL in Victorian government schools  

Listening skills are ones we all employ, both passively and actively, but how do we teach and evaluate them as part of VCE EAL assessment? In this session you will consider how to develop and embed valid EAL listening assessment into every outcome of Units 1-4 through the completion and analysis of an existing assessment […]

Have you been allocated VCE EAL for the first time in 2020? Would you like some guidance and support from three experienced EAL teachers who have been in your shoes before? Julia, Deborah and Rebecca joined forces to bring their extensive EAL teaching experience to VicTESOL members and guests with the aim of providing practical […]

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 11 February, 4-5:30 pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2019 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Jodie Whitehurst took us on a captivating journey during her interactive workshop “Using drama techniques in the teaching of adult EAL” by inviting us to participate in several authentic drama-based activities. The room was filled with a sense of excitement and trust and the participants transformed into the learners who […]

Matt Rodger and Greg Gow from Foundation House introduced the Schools Support Program that their organisation provides. They then explained the research project and resulting report: School is where you need to be equal and learn. Gaining insights from students of refugee backgrounds was the aim of this project. Greg and Matt described how this […]

Powerpoint Presentation: Worksheets: A guide to using quotations – 6 Apr 18 (1) Character profile – Brooks – Anna – add quotes -20 May 19 Character profile – ‘Brooks – Elinor- add quotes -20 May 19 Comparative Table – Miller & Brooks – Motives – Focussed on conflict- May 17 Comparative Essay – Scaffold- 24 […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

Faculty Research Webinar – October, 2016 (Dunwoodie, Webb, Wilkinson)

April Edwards

Associate Professor Misty Adoniou Thinking Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Professor Joe Lo Bianco Language Teachers and Language Planners: Leadership Possibilities from Classroom to Policy Forum  

Melanie Reynolds, Alexandra Vardis, Kellie Mason & David Kezilas...

Units 3 and 4 of the revised VCE English as an Additional Language (EAL) will be implemented from 2017.

The EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers has been endorsed by AITSL and is available for use.

Elizabeth Buckley...

Sally Humphrey

Summary On 8 June, the second in VicTESOL’s popular adult sector EAL Framework 101 series was held. 328 attendees from all across Australia were able to learn from a range of presenters experienced in designing programs using Victoria’s EAL Framework curriculum. Cathy Gill from Carringbush Adult Education presented on how their organisation plans and delivers […]

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 […]

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 […]

  On Wednesday 9 March, 373 EAL practitioners from the adult sector participated in a webinar hosted by VicTESOL. Attendees zoomed in from all states of Australia, from both regional and metropolitan regions. Recent changes to the Adult Migrant English Program has lead to the Victorian EAL Framework curriculum being mandated for use. VicTESOL decided to develop […]

VicTESOL will be running a webinar for teachers new to the Victorian EAL Framework curriculum for Adult TESOL in Week 6 of Term 1, 2022. Stay tuned for more details. We look forward to seeing you there.  

Edwin Creely, Katrina Tour, Peter Waterhouse & Elizabeth Keenan Thursday 4 November, 4-5:30pm, online  During the session participants contributed to these documents in their discussions. Flipped Learning : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iINgmm2ub4pkS-nG_OsXAYP0H9r_L0GUUgvhuAirBtg/edit?usp=sharing Hybrid Learning: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KYkyRh08-sxbCm9e9L6ljjBzRPmaixn-4Uum2mUdR1Y/edit?usp=sharing The script used by Elizabeth Keenan in the Carringbush part of the presentation is available here: The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have forced...

Tuesday 19 October, 4:00-5:30pm (AEST) Online Webinar The arrival of the pandemic saw a fast and impressive pivot to remote learning for all sectors of EAL. But as we move our way forward into a new normal, has the pandemic led to a re-imagining of the future of adult EAL delivery? In this event, a range of adult...

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 […]

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 […]

Tuesday March 30, 4:30-6:00 pm Online Event VicTESOL held an afternoon of sharing on the topic of multimedia use in the adult TESOL classroom. The session began with three teachers sharing how they use multimedia in their practice. Fiona Norquay from Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre demonstrated how she uses ABC’s ‘90 second news’ program with...

Jenny Robins Thursday 4 March 2021, 4-5:30 pm (AEDT) Online Event Jenny Robins began as a volunteer in 2011, then became a qualified teacher, working with adult migrants, people from refugee backgrounds and people seeking asylum to help them improve their English. In 2017 Jenny decided to improve her skills and enrolled in a Masters...

Luke Treadwell & Tanja Rykovska, AMES Australia Wednesday 18 November, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Event This workshop was based on the premise that digital literacy is vital for living, learning, and working in contemporary Australian society and therefore needs to be a key feature as both a support and an outcome of any relevant EAL program. […]

Webinar Event – Wednesday 11th November 2020, 7-8pm AEDT Learn about the Commonwealth Government’s vision for English language provision for adult migrants Presenter Alison Larkins was appointed in late 2019 as Commonwealth Coordinator-General for Migrant Services. Her role is to work closely within the Commonwealth and State/Territory governments, industry, and the community sector to drive […]

Jacky Springall Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Workshop   This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility.  The session gave a brief overview of the different...

Wednesday 28 October, 4-5pm Panel Discussion and Q&A Laurence Guttmann, Rosemary Abboud, Margaret Corrigan, and Julia Lippold Some resources that were shared within this session: Carringbush Education teacher training videos which are available at: https://www.carringbush.org.au/resources Foundation House: https://sifr.foundationhouse.org.au/ and https://foundationhouse.org.au/  There is an upcoming Calendar Professional Learning Session ‘Introduction to the Refugee Experience/Schools in for […]

LMERC information can be accessed by clicking here.  Find out about the collection, services, loan periods and instructions for joining.   This presentation was delivered by Jenny Peck at the LMERC Resourcing and Networking Event on Thursday 15th October 2020. Jenny Peck has prepared a resource sheet in response to some of the questions raised by the […]

Stories are powerful. They shape the way we think about the world, ourselves and each other. The stories we choose to present to students at school, as teachers and librarians, profoundly affect how students perceive the world and their place in it. We want to help you choose culturally diverse resources that reflect students’ diverse […]

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

Skye Playsted Thursday 14 May 2020 When we think of the term ‘culture’, it can be easy to focus on concrete elements such as art, music, clothing or food. However, these visible aspects are only the tip of the cultural iceberg (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2011). Deeper cultural assumptions are hidden from view and are not...

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

To download an edited PDF of powerpoint: To download the resource links page: Victoria Butterfield, Voula MacKenzie, Heena Sharma, Panayiota Kai The Virtual EAL New Arrivals Program of the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) Tuesday 28 April, 4-5pm Online Webinar Are you faced with the challenge of teaching your EAL students online during the COVID-19 […]

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Professor Rhonda Oliver, Curtin University Monday 28 October, 7-8pm (Australian Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time) Australian Aboriginal people interact in diverse ways and this is especially the case for those who grow up and live in rural and remote locations. In such locations Standard Australian English (SAE) is often not spoken as the residents’ first […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Steven delivered a hands on and engaging workshop where participants learned about the idea of using gestures to teach new vocabulary to EAL students. He spoke about the connection between speech and gestures and in this workshop. Among other things, participants experienced learning a new language using gestures to represent […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 Jodie Whitehurst took us on a captivating journey during her interactive workshop “Using drama techniques in the teaching of adult EAL” by inviting us to participate in several authentic drama-based activities. The room was filled with a sense of excitement and trust and the participants transformed into the learners who […]

Download a PDF of the presentation here: Incorporating Action Research in the Classroom with Low Language and Literacy Learners Rebecca Grimaud, Hân Trinh, Hayley Black – Carringbush Adult Education In this workshop Rebecca, Han and Hayley shared their experience incorporating action research into the classroom. They explored approaches to teaching digital and traditional literacy skills […]

Greg Gow, Program Coordinator, Schools Support Program & Matt Rodger, Schools Support Officer West Region, Schools Support Program ‘School is where you need to be equal and learn’: Insights from students of refugee backgrounds on learning and engagement in Victorian secondary schools (2019) This report presents the findings of a research project conducted by the […]

VicTESOL’s Teaching and Learning Cycle project, launched in 2018, was made possible by the generous support of a Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) Common Funding Agreement (CFA). VicTESOL has also contributed to this project. VicTESOL enlisted the specialist Prof Beverly Derewianka, an expert in EAL and mainstream language education and literacy, to work […]

Click here to access the Talking Democracy civic education kit: https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/SchoolsAndCommunity/TalkingDemocracy.html This resource kit is designed for people studying English as an Additional Language. It aims to educate students on elections, the system of government in Australia, how to enrol to vote, and how to vote correctly. Hard copies of the kit can also be ordered by […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

The asylum seeker experience of applying for admission to tertiary education in Australia – Webinar October, 2016 (Dunwoodie, Webb, Wilkinson)

Faculty Research Webinar – October, 2016 (Dunwoodie, Webb, Wilkinson)

Panel Discussion Building Communities Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Dr Howard Nicholas Engaging with Theories of Language  

Associate Professor Misty Adoniou Thinking Beyond the EAL Classroom  

Professor Joe Lo Bianco Language Teachers and Language Planners: Leadership Possibilities from Classroom to Policy Forum  

Melanie Reynolds, Alexandra Vardis, Kellie Mason & David Kezilas...

Amalia Fawcett, Hanya Senjov & Dr Kirsten Hutchison

Dr Naarah Sawers...

Shem Macdonald

Tuesday 19 October, 4:00-5:30pm (AEST) Online Webinar The arrival of the pandemic saw a fast and impressive pivot to remote learning for all sectors of EAL. But as we move our way forward into a new normal, has the pandemic led to a re-imagining of the future of adult EAL delivery? In this event, a range of adult...

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

The Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC) has produced two lists with examples of online multilingual and differentiated texts that may be useful support materials for remote learning, access them by visiting: LMERC Multilingual resources online list LMERC Online texts and (Reading) for secondary EAL students list (Also contains many sites useful for primary […]

Learning from home https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/pages/learningfromhome This page has been established to support educators access digital resources that can be used to support learning at home. Resources include sets of self-directed learning activities that can be provided to students in the form of a Word document or as a printed workbook. It also contains links to our […]

To download an edited PDF of powerpoint: To download the resource links page: Victoria Butterfield, Voula MacKenzie, Heena Sharma, Panayiota Kai The Virtual EAL New Arrivals Program of the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) Tuesday 28 April, 4-5pm Online Webinar Are you faced with the challenge of teaching your EAL students online during the COVID-19 […]

Are you concerned about your LBOTE students accessing schoolwork at home because their families come from different language backgrounds or parents do not speak English? Do you have questions about how you can engage parents so that students can learn more effectively at home? Dr. Marianne Turner, Dr. Anne Keary and Dr. Katrina Tour from […]

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 […]

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 […]

Tuesday March 30, 4:30-6:00 pm Online Event VicTESOL held an afternoon of sharing on the topic of multimedia use in the adult TESOL classroom. The session began with three teachers sharing how they use multimedia in their practice. Fiona Norquay from Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre demonstrated how she uses ABC’s ‘90 second news’ program with...

Luke Treadwell & Tanja Rykovska, AMES Australia Wednesday 18 November, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Event This workshop was based on the premise that digital literacy is vital for living, learning, and working in contemporary Australian society and therefore needs to be a key feature as both a support and an outcome of any relevant EAL program. […]

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

To download an edited PDF of powerpoint: To download the resource links page: Victoria Butterfield, Voula MacKenzie, Heena Sharma, Panayiota Kai The Virtual EAL New Arrivals Program of the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) Tuesday 28 April, 4-5pm Online Webinar Are you faced with the challenge of teaching your EAL students online during the COVID-19 […]

Shivali Nayak, ABC Education Thursday 21 November The digital age presents some new and interesting learning opportunities for EAL learners. How can teachers harness the power of digital resources to engage students in the classroom and provide them with self-learning opportunities? ABC Education Learn English creates innovative digital content for culturally and linguistically diverse learners. […]

  https://www.digitalliteracies.info/   This toolkit has been developed as part of the 2016 VicTESOL Research Grant project Improving refugee students’ access to digital literacies: integrating transmedia storytelling in an EAL (Year 7) classroom.  The project aimed to develop and disseminate a web-based toolkit for EAL practitioners consisting of a flexible framework and a set of […]

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 […]

Wednesday 25 August, 2021, 4-5pm Explore Immigration Museum’s digital resources and content that can expand learning experiences for EAL learners. Museum resources include migration stories, cultural stories, and objects, timelines and personal stories investigating a myriad of Australian identities. This professional learning program was designed for EAL and classroom teachers. Resources can be adapted to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Jacky Springall Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT Online Workshop   This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility.  The session gave a brief overview of the different...

Wednesday 28 October, 4-5pm Panel Discussion and Q&A Laurence Guttmann, Rosemary Abboud, Margaret Corrigan, and Julia Lippold Some resources that were shared within this session: Carringbush Education teacher training videos which are available at: https://www.carringbush.org.au/resources Foundation House: https://sifr.foundationhouse.org.au/ and https://foundationhouse.org.au/  There is an upcoming Calendar Professional Learning Session ‘Introduction to the Refugee Experience/Schools in for […]

Stories are powerful. They shape the way we think about the world, ourselves and each other. The stories we choose to present to students at school, as teachers and librarians, profoundly affect how students perceive the world and their place in it. We want to help you choose culturally diverse resources that reflect students’ diverse […]

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

Skye Playsted Thursday 14 May 2020 When we think of the term ‘culture’, it can be easy to focus on concrete elements such as art, music, clothing or food. However, these visible aspects are only the tip of the cultural iceberg (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2011). Deeper cultural assumptions are hidden from view and are not...

The ideas compiled here are from teacher comments and discussions during a number of professional learning sessions that VicTESOL has run since the move to online and remote learning began. The teachers who participated were from primary and secondary schools and from the adult education sector. Like the teachers in this session, we hope the […]

EAL information for schools is outlined on the Department website at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/diversity/eal/Pages/default.aspx Click here to access information relating to: New EAL curriculum Students Schools Teachers Program planning Assessment and reporting EAL in Victorian government schools  

  Online discussion forum and mini-presentations Tuesday 5 May & Thursday 7 May, 4:00-5:45pm Clare Blackman & Jessie Sambell (Blackburn English Language School) Emily Tucker (Carringbush Adult Education) Nathan Chong (Brunswick English Language Centre) Jennifer Peck (Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre- LMERC) VicTESOL provided an online space for teachers to come together to discuss […]

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Matt Rodger and Greg Gow from Foundation House introduced the Schools Support Program that their organisation provides. They then explained the research project and resulting report: School is where you need to be equal and learn. Gaining insights from students of refugee backgrounds was the aim of this project. Greg and Matt described how this […]

VicTESOL Symposium – August 2019 In this inspiring presentation, Carolyn shared her experience and insights into supporting newly arrived migrants and refugees in a school setting. She began with a look at what constitutes an “I can” rather than an “I can’t” mindset, then outlined ideas about how to gather information, value stories and build […]

Greg Gow, Program Coordinator, Schools Support Program & Matt Rodger, Schools Support Officer West Region, Schools Support Program ‘School is where you need to be equal and learn’: Insights from students of refugee backgrounds on learning and engagement in Victorian secondary schools (2019) This report presents the findings of a research project conducted by the […]

VicTESOL’s Teaching and Learning Cycle project, launched in 2018, was made possible by the generous support of a Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) Common Funding Agreement (CFA). VicTESOL has also contributed to this project. VicTESOL enlisted the specialist Prof Beverly Derewianka, an expert in EAL and mainstream language education and literacy, to work […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

Robyn Babaeff

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 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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Copy of Presentation Summary A wonderfully thorough and informative presentation about the changes to the new English/EAL Study Design was offered by Kellie Heintz from the EAL Division of the VCAA. She began with an important reminder of the eligibility criteria and Special Circumstances that determine whether students can be assessed in Units 3 & […]

The VCAA Chief Assessor for VCE EAL, Glynis Rose, and Assistant Chief Assessors, Rosemary McLoughlin, Jenna Gomes and Michael E Daniel, presented an overview of the 2021 VCE EAL exam. Glynis and Rosemary detailed what the assessors are looking for in each section of the exam and provided suggestions for how we can best prepare...

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 is assessment practice changing to meet current research? In this session, we looked at the big and small questions about assessment and reporting as it applies...

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 16 February 2021, 4-5:30pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2020 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

Stephanie Georgiou & Maddy Oh Tuesday 9 February, 4-5:30 pm Online Event Presenters: Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching EAL. She has worked in the adult, Catholic and government sectors, continuing her ongoing tenure at the Department of Education and Training. She has managed and coordinated multiple programmes throughout her...

Online Presentations and Discussion Rooms, Tuesday 6 October, 4-5:30 pm Naomi Weiler, Stephanie Georgiou, and Maria Papasotiriou Are you preparing students for the VCE EAL exam? Get ideas and strategies from three experienced EAL teachers and join us afterwards for small group discussions. Presenters Stephanie Georgiou has more than 18 years of experience in teaching […]

EAL information for schools is outlined on the Department website at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/diversity/eal/Pages/default.aspx Click here to access information relating to: New EAL curriculum Students Schools Teachers Program planning Assessment and reporting EAL in Victorian government schools  

Listening skills are ones we all employ, both passively and actively, but how do we teach and evaluate them as part of VCE EAL assessment? In this session you will consider how to develop and embed valid EAL listening assessment into every outcome of Units 1-4 through the completion and analysis of an existing assessment […]

  Wednesday 4 March Functional Multilingualism/Translanguaging are currently popular terms being researched, discussed and adapted to diverse learning settings. This webinar was a practical response to the current interest in Translanguaging, suggesting ways this might look in EALD classrooms and what teachers might consider when developing Translanguaging activities. With the intention of bringing students’ linguistic […]

Glynis Rose & Rosemary McLoughlin Tuesday 11 February, 4-5:30 pm, Online event In this session, Glynis and Rosemary provided feedback on student performance in the 2019 VCE EAL exam, including analysis of student performance in each section and examples of student responses. There were opportunities for participants to ask questions and gain valuable insight into...

...

The TEAL project, launched in 2015, is an online resource for teachers of primary and secondary level students who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Australia. It brings together a range of tools and advice for the assessment and reporting of the English language proficiency and progress of students within an ‘assessment […]

VicTESOL Symposium 2017 resources and presentations are now online!

...

Presentation from Kathryn Hill

Dr Angela Cincotta-Segi

Robyn Babaeff

A whole school approach to improving the assessment of EAL students Tools for Enhancing Assessment Literacy for Teachers of EAL (TEAL) is an online resource that brings together a range of tools, strategies and assessment advice for teachers of EAL learners in P – 10. Putting TEAL into Practice is designed to build on and […]

Melanie Reynolds, Alexandra Vardis, Kellie Mason & David Kezilas...

The video recording of the TEAL Webinar, presented by VicTESOL, is now available for Members.

Kylie Wilkinson, Siobhan Hannan, Sam Ward & Aisha Shorrock

Shem Macdonald

Edwin Creely, Katrina Tour, Peter Waterhouse & Elizabeth Keenan Thursday 4 November, 4-5:30pm, online  During the session participants contributed to these documents in their discussions. Flipped Learning : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iINgmm2ub4pkS-nG_OsXAYP0H9r_L0GUUgvhuAirBtg/edit?usp=sharing Hybrid Learning: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KYkyRh08-sxbCm9e9L6ljjBzRPmaixn-4Uum2mUdR1Y/edit?usp=sharing The script used by Elizabeth Keenan in the Carringbush part of the presentation is available here: The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have forced...

Wednesday 25 August, 2021, 4-5pm Explore Immigration Museum’s digital resources and content that can expand learning experiences for EAL learners. Museum resources include migration stories, cultural stories, and objects, timelines and personal stories investigating a myriad of Australian identities. This professional learning program was designed for EAL and classroom teachers. Resources can be adapted to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Tuesday 8th September 2020 If you expect to work with EAL/D learners in your teaching career, then you will want to be familiar with the EAL/D Elaborations of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In this webinar, Jenny went through some of the thinking behind the document and showed how it can serve teachers both […]

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 and present some key classroom translanguaging strategies used by teachers to create more inclusive and engaging learning experiences for multilingual learners. The session was aimed...

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