Program

Coffee and tea will be provided.

To avoid congestion, please don't arrive at the last minute or you may miss the opening!

Wurundjeri Elder, Tony Garvey

A proud Wurundjeri man, Tony Garvey has been contributing to his community for 30 years. He has worked for the Aboriginal co‑op in Healsville as well as for Wurundjeri Council. In recent years Tony has developed his passion for Cultural Heritage Management within the council. Tony commenced delivering Welcomes four years ago when his mother, Aunty Doreen Garvey-Wandin (Senior Wurundjeri Elder), gave her blessing for Tony to take on this cultural duty. Tony has a particularly deep connection with Coranderrk – a former thriving Aboriginal Station in Healesville. Tony takes great pride in being a Wurundjeri descendant and with his strong past and contemporary connection with Coranderrk.

Executive Director at Department of Education

mainstream education

Krushnadevsinh (Kano) Ravalji & Mamuch Chuol

Shout Out - Centre for Multicultural Youth

Dr Lauren Codd 

Berry Street Take Two

Trauma can have profound impacts on the brain, relationships, and behaviour.  Established in 2003, Berry Street Take Two is a clinical service providing trauma-informed mental health services for infants, children, young people, families, and caregivers affected by trauma.

Dr Lauren Codd from Take Two will present on the impacts of trauma on the brain, focusing on the neurobiological processes that cause trauma responses. She will cover the physiological and psychological responses to trauma, how it manifests in the body and its impact on learning. Also addressed will be how traumatised brains react and learn; and overcoming the hyperarousal and hypoarousal states common in those affected by trauma. Practical sensory regulation strategies will be demonstrated and practiced, enabling educators to support students to engage in learning activities. By integrating knowledge about trauma, brain science, and regulation techniques, educators can create compassionate and inclusive learning environments that promote healing, resilience, and academic success for all students.

Barbara Dahlson

Blackburn English Language School

In this workshop you will be learning how to support newly arrived students to speak clearly, practise vocabulary and learn and reinforce the language structures of every day spoken English.   You will learn how to use chants, rhymes and songs to engage and motivate students, while teaching the curriculum content. You will also have the opportunity to create your own chants, rhymes and songs to use in your classrooms.

Dr Beverly Derewianka

Emeritus Professor at the University of Wollongong

In Rothery’s original version of the literacy teaching and learning cycle (some four decades ago), oral language was not featured. More recently, an awareness of the role of oral interaction in learning has become more prominent. In this presentation, we will consider the nature of oral language in Halliday’s functional model and how our oral choices differ depending on the context. We’ll also look at how such practices as dialogic teaching and  accountable talk can enhance the learning of new arrival students as they move through the teaching and learning cycle.

Tim Jezard

Signs of anxiety and depression in children and teens – what should teachers look for

• how anxiety and depression effect academic performance and motivation ·
• how behavioural issues play out in the classroom and what strategies teachers can employ to negate behavioural issues ·
• how to conduct mediation for students suffering from trauma/anxiety/depression, for example, when students get into disagreements during play time ·
• what is positive psychology and how can this be used by teachers in the classroom

Bronwyn Custance

This workshop looks at robust routines for teaching vocabulary. Routines help to create a safe learning environment and reduce cognitive load, enabling students to focus on the intended learning rather than what they are expected to do. We will explore robust routines that involve students in talking to learn as they use and demonstrate understanding of the focus vocabulary. These routines can be used in pre-teaching to support reading. Discussion and activities will also consider the power of morphology and how to determine which vocabulary should be retained and explicitly taught when we modify curriculum texts to reduce complexities for our students.

Anh Phan

Western English Language School

In this session, Anh will take you on her journey with the Science of Reading so far and why she put her teaching career on hold for speech pathology. She’ll delve into the realm of evidence-based practices for reading, including phonics and comprehension, and the key models and research that underpin them. Through this session, you’ll be invited to reflect on your journey with teaching reading and consider what learnings may lie ahead.

Anh hopes to foster feelings of camaraderie and support amidst a discourse on reading that is often mired in division and frustration.  

Brian Dare

As students across all levels of schooling engage in learning across the curriculum, they are expected to comprehend and compose a range of texts. These texts can vary from the spoken texts of the teacher and others to the complex multimodal texts of their textbooks to the multiplicity of texts they produce in response to the tasks set for them. While other meaning-making systems are involved, language typically plays a fundamental role.

For English EAL/D students, who are learning a new language at the same time as learning in that language, this is a huge challenge. A key question here is how can we best support our English language learners in accessing the meanings of this complex textual landscape.

In this presentation, I will draw on a functional model of language to show how we can support students with both comprehending and composing by attending to one of the fundamental areas of the language system: the lexicogrammar where words and groups of words combine to make meaning within the clause. I will argue that building our EAL/D students’ capacity to see how words ‘chunk together’ to make meaning is one of the most powerful and fundamental understandings we can develop in our students.

In doing so, I hope to show such an approach will not only be highly effective in helping the students make meaning in English but also open the potential for contrasting how the patterns in their own languages compare and contrast with English. In this way, we will not only support their capacity to use English but also highlight the value of the languages they bring to the learning context. 

GELC MEAs

Geelong English Language Centre MEAs and Lynda Newell, the Curriculum Coordinator will present this interactive workshop. This presentation/workshop will include video footage of GELC MEAs engaging with their students during reading sessions. Key strategies will be highlighted and explored. Participants will then have an opportunity to engage with their colleagues as they take a closer look at specific strategies which they could use with their students. The aim is for lots of shared discussion and interaction between colleagues.

Allison Greene  and Christine Bakopanos 

Foundation House

In this workshop participants will explore the impacts of traumatic refugee experiences and settlement challenges for children and young people and what manifestations of trauma or settlement challenges might look like for newly arrived young people at school. We will also present practical strategies for supporting students in the classroom and helping them to access mental health and wellbeing supports.

Jennifer Clarke and Afnan Matti

Foundation House

In this workshop participants will explore ideas and strategies to support sustainable practice in bi-cultural work in schools. We will also look at trauma-informed responses for working with children, young people and their families in situations that require incidental counselling skills.

Marko Jakic & Helen Zhao

Western English Language School

When EAL learners become newly immersed in the Australian English context, they often find significant differences between their languages’ and English’s sound systems. These can impede learners’ perception and pronunciation of English, affecting communicative success and confidence. Common approaches like ‘repeat after me’ see little success because students don’t first get the “auditory bombardment” needed to discern English phonemes, and they continue to operate within the phonological space of mother tongue i.e. applying the closest L1 approximations to English sounds. What Marko and Helen will demonstrate is that the way to break free of this “iron grip of mother tongue” is an application of explicit teaching known as proprioception – developing students’ ability to get into conscious command of their own articulators so that they can move beyond the strictures of L1. Through practical demonstrations and interactive activities, teachers will acquire innovative – yet intuitive – tools to help their students discern and pronounce the phonemes of English successfully.

Nathan Chong  & Julie Thomas

Western English Language School

This presentation equips EAL/D teachers with practical strategies for fostering collaboration among their newly-arrived students at secondary level. Explore techniques to promote communication skills in various subject-areas across diverse proficiency levels. Learn how to explicitly teach negotiation, turn-taking, and respectful disagreement within groups.

Dr Beverly Derewianka

Emeritus Professor at the University of Wollongong

In Rothery’s original version of the literacy teaching and learning cycle (some four decades ago), oral language was not featured. More recently, an awareness of the role of oral interaction in learning has become more prominent. In this presentation, we will consider the nature of oral language in Halliday’s functional model and how our oral choices differ depending on the context. We’ll also look at how such practices as dialogic teaching and  accountable talk can enhance the learning of new arrival students as they move through the teaching and learning cycle.

Samantha McLeod

This session will explore Collingwood English Language School's journey in implementing and adapting the Walker Learning Framework (play-based learning) used by many mainstream schools, to suit our A level students in a New Arrivals Program. This session will tell our story, but also provide hints and tips that we have discovered along the way. This session is suited to A levels teachers, Leading Teachers, Learning Specialists and Principals who are interested in how play-based learning might work in their schools.

A/Prof. Julie Choi, Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens & Dr Shu Ohki

This workshop will engage teachers in multimodal hands-on experiences to expand the possibilities of meaning making for students through arts-rich translanguaging pedagogies. Using the Victorian Curriculum: EAL Content Descriptors as a starting point, teachers will explore how to meet achievement standards with a focus on meaning making by harnessing students’ full knowledge and identity repertoires. This workshop is based on a recent research project undertaken with Year 4 EAL students at a Melbourne school. The project investigated the role of arts-rich translanguaging spaces in supporting students to come to see themselves as resourceful multilingual writers. Throughout the workshop we will share key findings and examples of students’ works.

Presenters:

This workshop will be facilitated by lecturers in Language and Literacies Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne.

Associate Professor Julie Choi leads the Master of TESOL and Modern Languages courses in the Faculty of Education. She is co-editor and author of multiple books on language, culture, identity, autoethnography, plurilingualism, and academic writing.

Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens coordinates and teaches subjects for pre-service primary and early childhood teachers across literacy and the arts. Her research areas include drama-rich pedagogy for learning across the curriculum and arts-rich experiences to support development of children’s critical language awareness.

Dr Shu Ohki coordinates various subjects for the Master of TESOL and Modern Languages programs and the Master of Teaching TESOL learning area. His research focuses on languages teachers’ professional knowledge and practice and Content and Language Integrated Learning Pedagogy.

Brian Dare

As students across all levels of schooling engage in learning across the curriculum, they are expected to comprehend and compose a range of texts. These texts can vary from the spoken texts of the teacher and others to the complex multimodal texts of their textbooks to the multiplicity of texts they produce in response to the tasks set for them. While other meaning-making systems are involved, language typically plays a fundamental role.

For English EAL/D students, who are learning a new language at the same time as learning in that language, this is a huge challenge. A key question here is how can we best support our English language learners in accessing the meanings of this complex textual landscape. In this presentation, I will draw on a functional model of language to show how we can support students with both comprehending and composing by attending to one of the fundamental areas of the language system: the lexicogrammar where words and groups of words combine to make meaning within the clause. I will argue that building our EAL/D students’ capacity to see how words ‘chunk together’ to make meaning is one of the most powerful and fundamental understandings we can develop in our students.

In doing so, I hope to show such an approach will not only be highly effective in helping the students make meaning in English but also open the potential for contrasting how the patterns in their own languages compare and contrast with English. In this way, we will not only support their capacity to use English but also highlight the value of the languages they bring to the learning context. 

Bronwyn Custance

This workshop looks at robust routines for teaching vocabulary. Routines help to create a safe learning environment and reduce cognitive load, enabling students to focus on the intended learning rather than what they are expected to do. We will explore robust routines that involve students in talking to learn as they use and demonstrate understanding of the focus vocabulary. These routines can be used in pre-teaching to support reading. Discussion and activities will also consider the power of morphology and how to determine which vocabulary should be retained and explicitly taught when we modify curriculum texts to reduce complexities for our students.

Rob Vingerhoets

The presentations (Primary and Secondary) will be hands-on and focus on a range of minimum preparation, mathematically rich and engaging activities. Most will be open-ended and so allow students with different abilities and from different backgrounds to be thinking and actively engaged in the tasks. Most require minimum instruction – but maximum learning. Mathematics is a rich symbolic language and the common thread that will run through both the Primary and Secondary presentations is the crucial need for students to be exposed to the vocab and terminology of mathematics. This will be highlighted in and through the activities.

A/Prof. Julie Choi, Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens & Dr Shu Ohki

This workshop will engage teachers in multimodal hands-on experiences to expand the possibilities of meaning making for students through arts-rich translanguaging pedagogies. Using the Victorian Curriculum: EAL Content Descriptors as a starting point, teachers will explore how to meet achievement standards with a focus on meaning making by harnessing students’ full knowledge and identity repertoires. This workshop is based on a recent research project undertaken with Year 4 EAL students at a Melbourne school. The project investigated the role of arts-rich translanguaging spaces in supporting students to come to see themselves as resourceful multilingual writers. Throughout the workshop we will share key findings and examples of students’ works.

Presenters:

This workshop will be facilitated by lecturers in Language and Literacies Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne.

Associate Professor Julie Choi leads the Master of TESOL and Modern Languages courses in the Faculty of Education. She is co-editor and author of multiple books on language, culture, identity, autoethnography, plurilingualism, and academic writing.

Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens coordinates and teaches subjects for pre-service primary and early childhood teachers across literacy and the arts. Her research areas include drama-rich pedagogy for learning across the curriculum and arts-rich experiences to support development of children’s critical language awareness.

Dr Shu Ohki coordinates various subjects for the Master of TESOL and Modern Languages programs and the Master of Teaching TESOL learning area. His research focuses on languages teachers’ professional knowledge and practice and Content and Language Integrated Learning Pedagogy.

Susanna Wu & Tabassum Haidar

Blackburn English Language School

Teaching narrative writing to new arrival EAL students poses challenges due to their limited English proficiency and cultural background. In this presentation, we will explore practical strategies and instructional approaches to scaffold narrative writing skills effectively for these students. We will share our experiences teaching the narrative genre through our ‘Beach’ and ‘Farm’ unit topics and discuss how these topics can provide meaningful context and increase student engagement and comprehension. This includes sharing specific learning activities and strategies from these units, demonstrating their adaptability to support EAL students in developing their narrative writing skills. The strategies presented will relate to using oral retelling, breaking down complex narrative structures and teaching language features specific to the narrative genre. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain insights into how to create an engaging learning environment that empowers new arrival EAL students to develop their narrative writing and retelling abilities.

Jan Sinclair

Teaching Easy Editing From Full Stops to Ellipses! Teachers want their students to improve their writing. Proof-reading and editing can really boost student writing development. Would you like your students to learn to edit their writing using an effective, easy method? Jan Sinclair is offering an hour-long workshop where you will learn how to:

• Teach proof-reading and editing using an easy structured approach.
• Follow step-by-step editing stages, starting with the humble full stop.
• Use this method with writers from Foundation to Secondary years.
• Gain the skills that you will teach your students.
• Develop easy-to-use materials for your classroom that support students to read and edit their writing.

This workshop is equally suited to teachers of Primary and Secondary years students. To gain maximum benefit please bring along three pieces of student writing which have not been corrected or edited, for your use only. Photocopies are ideal for this purpose. Also, please bring four coloured pencils: green, blue, red and yellow. Jan claims that your students’ writing will improve significantly once they learn and begin to use these simple steps. Students will see the improvements in their writing as they develop further easy editing skills and so will you!

Lorraine Batres

Basic Hands-on Science Experiments for New Arrivals If there is one thing that students gravitate to at school, it’s exploring with hands-on activities. This session will guide teachers through basic Science activities as a pathway to teaching EAL to newly arrived students. Teachers will delve into the stages of guessing, hypothesising, predicting, trialling, analysing results and drawing conclusions. They will focus on oral language development, as well as the structured written component that follows experiments. At the end of the session, participants will be provided with a list of 35+ basic experiments, with online links and resources to refer to. These experiments will include density, velocity, chemistry and more. By running this session, Lorraine hopes to inspire participants to feel confident in teaching basic hands-on Science activities to newly arrived EAL students.

Rob Vingerhoets

The presentations (Primary and Secondary) will be hands-on and focus on a range of minimum preparation, mathematically rich and engaging activities. Most will be open-ended and so allow students with different abilities and from different backgrounds to be thinking and actively engaged in the tasks. Most require minimum instruction – but maximum learning. Mathematics is a rich symbolic language and the common thread that will run through both the Primary and Secondary presentations is the crucial need for students to be exposed to the vocab and terminology of mathematics. This will be highlighted in and through the activities.

Jodie Whitehurst

The Language Scene

In this energising workshop, EAL/D teachers will have the opportunity to learn (through hands-on participation) a series of accessible, non-threatening drama techniques to engage and motivate their learners. Teaching through drama has been shown to bring a wealth of social, emotional and educational benefits to learners of all ages. Drama builds trust and connections, and can provide meaningful contexts for communicating in the target language. Through this embodied approach, learning also becomes active, collaborative and learner-centred, enabling students to develop a range of valuable life skills. No previous drama experience is required; just bring your positive energy and adventurous spirit!

>  PLEASE BRING A LONG SCARF WITH YOU TO THE SESSION

Jayan Nandagopan & Thea Ho

Western English Language School

In the dynamic landscape of English as an Additional Language education, this presentation explores innovative approaches to leverage technology for enhanced student engagement and language acquisition. Focused on enriching the teaching and learning experience across all stages, we delve into ChatGPT's versatility as a transformative tool for educators. Through harnessing its capabilities, teachers adeptly tailor content to address diverse student needs, fostering inclusivity and igniting engagement. Moreover, ChatGPT facilitates differentiation, ensuring every student's proficiency level is met with tailored support. Attendees will explore practical examples and strategies, gaining invaluable insights into how ChatGPT revolutionizes EAL instruction, empowering teachers to create dynamic and personalised learning experiences that maximise student growth and achievement. This text was totally not written by ChatGPT...

Cath Ferla & Kate McAll

Western English Language School

This session will give teachers practical strategies to help students become familiar with the writing process. Writer’s Workshop gives students strategies and skills they can use for writing tasks both while they are in the New Arrivals Program and in mainstream schools. Writer’s Workshop aims to help students develop a more positive attitude to writing. Writer’s Workshop helps students develop skills in brainstorming, planning, choosing topics to write about and sharing their writing. Students are encouraged to publish their work at the end of term. Participants will take part in activities they can use in class. Cath Ferla is a published author and EAL teacher who teaches Writer’s Workshop at Western English Language School (WELS). Kate McAll is a teacher at WELS. Kate developed the Writer’s Workshop program at WELS and has mentored many teachers in Writer’s Workshop.

Wendy Khalil

Collingwood English Language School

In the last 5 years, I feel a dramatic shift has occurred in Education that has also impacted New Arrivals Schools across Victoria. The growth of varied Wellbeing & Mental Health professionals in schools and the roles they play has significantly grown, especially since the roll out of FISO 2.0 which has seen for the first time both “Learning and Wellbeing” as being of equal importance in the growth of a young person into adulthood.

The presentation will be an opportunity for us to come together as Allied Health/wellbeing/mental health professional to focus on our unique role in new arrivals schools. To get to know each other and learn from each other.

Exploring questions together such as:

• how do we differ from mainstream school and how are we the same (or not)?
• How do we see our role within our school, and the broader education system while supporting the beginning of a young person’s settlement journey?
• Common presentations we work with such as depression, anxiety, trauma (war, family & other), settlement trauma, conflict with Australian systems and others
• How and are we able to supports teachers, education support staff and broader wellbeing programs 
• Developing ourselves as professionals in a predominate education settling and ensuring our self-care

Melita Bond

Theraplay®

Sunshine Circles® is an evidence-based group program modelled on Theraplay® principles that focuses on the social and emotional development of children. Sunshine Circles® gives children an opportunity to practice their self-regulation skills, co-regulation skills and to feel encouraged to have a go at achievable challenges. Educators lead playful, cooperative, and nurturing activities to create an atmosphere of fun, caring, acceptance and encouragement. The goal is to enhance children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development through restoring attachments and connections to others. Sunshine Circles® can be used with children of any age but is best known for pre-school/early years ages and children up to 12yrs. Research on its application includes randomised control trials and Australian research (2023 winner of the Victorian Early Years Awards by Barwon Child Youth & Family) demonstrated a significant positive shift in overall outcomes identified for over 80% of all participants, with over 60% of children showing a decrease in challenging, uncooperative, and distracted behaviours. Further research by NSW Education showed significant positive results for students as refugees, multi-cultural backgrounds, and those at risk.

Speakers TBA