The first two weeks of Term 4 have been busy as usual. No rest for the wicked. For instance the writers of the Year 9 Science explanation document meet as a group for the last time. The document includes a teaching resource accompanied by three PowerPoints about explanation structure and language. It will be launched at EDC Hindmarsh on 21st November. Fliers will soon be distributed to all secondary principals in the region.
Bronwyn Custance and I aligned the Language and Literacy Levels to the four phases of EALD student progression across F-2, Yrs 3-6 and Yrs 7-10 in the ACARA EALD Teacher Resource. This may form part of the introduction to the Levels document.
The ERCs are well underway in their work to develop a new moderated evidence resource to accompany the Levels. This is a large chunk of our work for the next few weeks.
However, we are still finding time to help prepare for the Literacy Leaders Network meeting on 2nd November. I will be part of a panel on the day and talk briefly about the work ERCs have been doing towards the implementation of the Australian Curriculum and what we see as opportunities and challenges for EALD students posed by the new curriculum. I have also met with a couple of the groups presenting on the day. This includes a pair of literacy leaders, Alice Crater and Davide Marino, from Whyalla who are doing great things at a whole school level.
While in Whyalla I delivered some PD about nominalisation and sentence openers to staff at Stuart High. It was very well received. I also visited Hincks Ave Primary to observe their two new GI ESL students and give some recommendations for their teaching. It was wonderful to see the way in which students, SSOs, teachers and leaders were working to support these two new Filipino students. I'll be back in Whyalla on 8th November to present some grammar PD for teachers at Edward John Eyre High.
I managed to find time to attend the Western Adelaide regional leaders meeting last Friday. The table I was on gave some positive feedback about the level of advice and PD provided by Giuseppe and me. Just as importantly the leaders heard about the department's new numeracy and literacy strategy. Teachers and leaders are being encouraged to have their say about the 6 drivers for improvement.
Finally I have compiled a summary of the ERCs feedback about the plan and process for "at risk" ASSOE students during transition into mainstream. Jill Brodie-Tyrrell and I meet with ASSOE staff tomorrow to discuss in detail, but I can say that 28 transition plans were written in the first year and there was no need to write a subsequent pan for any of these students. This suggests all these students made a successful transition into mainstream high schools.

In the last couple of weeks, a major focus of my work and the other consultants has been the Language and Literacy Levels. For example, I met with my manager, Karyl Martin, and Bronwyn Custance who is the writer of the document to clarify the relationship between it and ACARA's EALD Teacher Resource.

Essentially we feel the ACARA document informs:

• teachers about what each broad cohort of EALD students is likely to be able to do across the literacy macro-skills
• teachers and leaders about general teaching strategies for each cohort
• school decisions about prioritising EALD support and which students should be assigned a Language and Literacy Level.

Meanwhile, the Language and Literacy Levels will be used to:

• inform each student's EALD support category to allocate EALD funding to schools
• inform teachers of the language needed to access and demonstrate knowledge of Australian Curriculum
• provide a fine grain assessment of student writing (and oral language)
• monitor and track any student's progress especially in writing.

The two documents are not in competition with each other. Indeed the introduction to the Levels will include a reference to the ACARA document and its usefulness. To further this work, Bronwyn and I will meet next week to align specific Levels to the descriptions of the four stages of EALD progression from R-10.

During the last few days, some of the consultants have started developing a set of moderated evidence to support teachers in assigning accurate and consistent Levels from 2013. This is just one aspect of the implementation planning happening in Term 4. Catholic Education have also been part of some of our implementation planning meetings and as a result there will be sharing of resources across the two systems.

In my last post, I mentioned a garmmar PD session I was going to run at the start of the school holidays. It went very well. Most participants rated the training as excellent. This is one of the reasons why I am offering it again. It will be in two parts from 4-6 pm Wednesday 31st October and 4-6 pm Wednesday 7th November. Both sessions will be held at Flinders Park. Emial me for a flier ross.hamilton@sa.gov.au