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

The last couple of weeks have been very busy, but I still managed to take a couple of days off to celebrate my birthday in Sydney by climbing the bridge in 100 kph winds. I can highly recommend it.
Back in the "real world" I have had the opportunity, thanks to Jock Lawson ICAN Manager, to speak with the FLO school coordinators and FLO provider representatives about how I might assist in the teaching of literacy in FLO programs and in student transition into and out of FLO.
The latest Secondary ESL Teacher Network meeting organised by my colleagues Dick Doyle and Joan Richards took place on Thursday evening. It was useful to hear from several teachers about how their schools are using a whole school approach to literacy improvement. I dont think as many teachers would have been able to do so just a couple of years ago.
Since my last post, I have also been part of a group of IELC leaders which revisited a regional plan to improve transition between primary IELCs and mainstream schools in the region. One of the actions is to survey mainstream schools to see what they think are areas for improvement.
Yesterday was the last TESMC Module at Kilkenny Primary. One advantage of delivering the course in a Term 3 is that teachers can now apply their learning before the end of the year. However, some teacher participants think they have not been given sufficent time to trial the strategies in their classes during the course. What has impressed me so far is the perserverance many SSOs have shown to complete activities when they dont necessarily relate to how they work with students at the moment.
I have continued to work with the Science teachers to write the Yr 9 genre document. The task has had many revisions and therefore required revisions of success criteria, task process steps etc. However, when we meet for ther last time after the holidays I am confident the resource will provide teachers and their Year 9 Science students with the resources required to plan for and successfully write an expanation. The final copy will be available from the regional web site by mid next term.
Also to be completed mid Term 4 is a regional genre map aligned to SACE and the Australian Curriculum. I will be hosting several meetings with SACE English, History, Maths and Science teachers in early Term 4 to help identifty the most important macro-genres in these SACE subjects. This will then be used to decide which common genres should be explicitly taught and assessed from years 6-10 to prepare students for SACE.
The ESL consultants have also looked at the feedback from the trial of the draft 1-10 Language and Literacy Levels. It shows there is a strong correlation between the Scales and Levels. While there are some minor adjustments to be made as a result of the feedback, most of those who trialled it were happy with its organisation and content. The draft 11-14 Levels will soon be finished and trialled. The ESL consultants will spend some of the term holidays working with their Catholic Ed colleagues developing implementation resources.
Next week I will be delivering a 1/2 day PD session about noun groups, nominalisation and circumstances in the R-7 Australian Curriculum. Twenty one primary teachers have registered so it is obviously a topic of some interest at the moment. I will also deliver the PD in Whyalla next month.
For those taking holidays, I hope you enjoy them!

Since my last post I have spent a bit of time working with the other consultants planning our work for 2013 and the program for the Literacy Leaders Network meeting on 2nd November. Fliers will be distributed in the usual manner. We have secured Jenny Hammond as the guest speaker. She was the edior of Scaffolding: teaching and learning in language and literacy education published by PETAA.
I also visited ASSOE to help in their deliberations about curriculum and pedagogy renewal. It was pleasing that my advice was echoed in the draft paper being developed by primary IELP leaders on the topic. I worked with this group to revise the IELP Transistion Report in light of the Lanaguage and Litercay Levels. The report is completed by IELP teachers about each student before they move into the mainstream.
During this last week I have also been able to attend the latest PD session run by Dr Peter White from UniNSW. We looked at a set of texts written by the same student over several years. Her improvement in recount writing was clearly demonstrated. She used language to engage the reader about one or two main events rather than just trying to recount a bland series of events. The role of the teacher and task design was key to the student's progress.
I also attended the Literacy and Numeracy Expo for two days. Highlights were the presentation of the executive summary of the Adolescent Literacy Project undertaken by the SA secondary principals' association. Recommendations included more literacy PD specific to the secondary years. I suggest all secondary teachers and leaders make themselves aware of the report. It will be intersting to see the DECD response.
However, the most outstanding presentation came from Priyanka Sharma from The Pines IELC. She demonstrated that the teaching of functional grammar within a teaching and learning cycle can be fun and contribute to students making extraordinary progress. All of what she showed is achieveable in IELPs or mainstream classes. Hopefully the ESL consultants can arrange for her to repeat her presentation and to have it filmed so as many teachers as possible can view it. I think a number of doubters in school and corporate leadership positions should also see the evidence.

In the last couple of weeks I have worked with my colleague, Giuseppe Mammone, and two primary teachers to develop an R-7 Australian Curriculum Genre map. A draft has now gone out to schools for feedback. I have also developed a similar map for Years 8-10 and one  page overviews for each genre. Each overview outlines the purpose, structure and language of that genre. The language is linked to the headings in the Aust Curriculum literacy continuum (e.g. text knowledge). The 8-10 materials have also gone to schools for comment.
I was filmed last thursday doing a very brief introduction to two ESL Moodle courses. One is ESL Leadership 101 and the other is ESL Teaching Resources. Both can be accessed via the Literacy Secretariat site. The short vidoes were aimed at giving ESL teachers who had registered for the latest Literacy Leaders Network online conference some suggestions about which of the online Moodles they might find most useful.
I also spent a morning with staff from the Australian Red Cross and Australian Federal Police hearing about the dreadful situation often desperate people find themselves in as a result of people trafficking. These people are often duped into coming to Australia and then exploited for profit or sex. While the numbers are relatively small in South Australia these two websites may be of interest www.antislavery.org.au/resources/fact-sheets.html and www.ag.gov.au/Peopletrafficking/Pages/default.aspx
Yesterday I was invited to speak with the leadership team at William Light R-12 School about what language choices make the biggest differences in student writing. Reports from the school are positive and a couple of faculties may work with me about this later this year. I am more than happy to discuss this with other site leaders with the view of discussing it further with their learning area coordinators
Today I started working with three Science teachers to develop a Year 9 Science genre document. It is the next step in the regional project about the explicit teaching of genres across Years 8-10 Aust Curric. The first document and accompanying PowerPoint are on the regional website www.decd.sa.gov..au/westernadelaide/pages/Curriculum > Literacy.

This week I have visited three more schools to write new IELC Transiton Plans for students enrolling in mainstream from ASSOE or to review plans written last term. I believe these plans are working well because there have been some good news stories as a result of schools focusing upon these "at risk" students. Once a school is made aware of the student they have used a variety of existing processes or programs to monitor and engage students. I am yet to have to write a plan for the second term that any of the students have been at their new school.
While mentioning ASSOE, the staff there was kind enough to let me trial the Year 8 English genre document with them. From their point of view, they gained more insight into the structure of the Australian Curriculum: English and the standard of work in the mainstream. I gained some useful feedback about the draft resources.
Last Thursday, I attended some very informative professional learning about creating and composing factual multimodal texts. This PETAA training was run by Michele Anstey and Geoff Bull. One of the highlights for me was a very clear definition about what is a multimodal text. We also started to learn and apply some of the grammar of other semiotic systems apart from linguistics. While much of the day was aimed at primary students, I think the information about the inquiry model is also applicable to older students. The presenters have written a text on the topic and it is available from the PETAA. PETAA have also produced twelve free online units of work from Years 3-8. They are aligned to the Australian Curriculum: English and available from www.globalwords.edu.au
Over the last few weeks as schools start to come to terms with the implementation of the Aust Curriculum, three secondary schools have asked how they should plan for and assess ESL students when students study ESL as a subject instead of or as well as English. Teachers are allowed to assess students with disabilities against a lower year level, but there is no guidance about ESL students. It is an agenda item for this Friday's meeting of the ESL Regional Consultants, but I would love to hear other people's opinion on this.
Advance Notice! The next Secondary ESL Teacher Network meeting is from 4-6 pm on Thursday 13th September at Adelaide High School. Flyers will be sent to the normal email lists.

Hello again. Term 3 is very much under way.
Since my last post, I have finished the TESMC course with the Brompton Primary School staff. At the moment they are writing teaching and learning cycles to be implemented from the beginning of this term. The day after finishing the course at Brompton, I began a new course with 32 staff members at Kilkenny Primary. In fact, as a result of the school leadership devoting Monday to the course, we have already completed 4 of 9 modules.
Last Friday, I was fortunate to hear the Kilkenny principal, Mike Tate, talk about how his school has implemented a whole school approach to reading. It was a wonderful example of instructional leadership and appropriate use of data and resources. Mike along with his leadership team have also fully participated in the first four TESMC modules. Even when I spoke to him last term about the option of his staff doing the shorter Language for Learning course he knew what he wanted for his staff and students and decided TESMC would deliver the desired outcomes.
At the same meeting at which Mike spoke, Keith Bartley spoke about the new directions for DECD. He took questions from the audience at the end so I took the chance to ask about the Every Chance for Every Child strategy. This is aimed at making birth to five year olds "school ready". As our state is inviting more migrants and refugees to help develop the state socially and economically, I asked if there was scope to include migrant or refugee children in this strategy, because not all of our students have the same starting point. The answer was about who decided it, not why nor if it could be extended to include older students, but at least the issue had been raised. If you too feel the strategy should be offered to older students in need, you might like to have your voice heard by going to the Every Chance for Every Child website and leaving a comment.
Last week, I continued to promote and organise the launch of the Explict Teaching of Writing across the Years 8-10 Australian Curriculum: Year 8 English document. This will take place at EDC Hindmarsh from 4-6 pm on Thursday 9th August. Soon after the launch, the document and accompanying PowerPoint will be posted on the regional website so others can access it.
Today, I worked at William Light R-12 School. It was great example of the diverse work of an ESL consultant. I initially worked with Sabrina Walker, English/ESL coordinator, to give advice about upcoming learning area professional development about the Australian Curriculum. I also updated her about the regional genre map under development. We then spoke with the principal, Michele Pope, about what language choices make the most difference in senior secondary writing. This resulted in her arranging for me to return to deliver the same professional learning to her leadership team. I also worked her Sabrina and the counsellor and a year level manger to write an IELC Transistion Plan for a newly enrolled student from Adelaide Secondary School of English. I then met with a Year 12 ESL teacher to give advice about subject counselling and offerings. Finally, I read a text written by one of her students and gave her feedback about what grade I would give it and why. The rest of the week looks like it will be just as busy and varied.
In closing, thanks for those people who tell me they have read and enjoyed my blog. Dont forget you dont have to wait until you see me in person. Post a comment! The blog has now had over 300 views including at least two from the USA and Russia. These may have been the result of search or URL typos but it is gladdening to think people overseas may find my blog to be of some interest.