Virtual Learning Network

Hi everyone,

   Lots of great conversations online this week. Thank you to all those teachers who replied to Nik’s request to get in touch with other North Shore teachers. 

In relation to this Sian asked if the North Shore Cluster Group was currently running? Does anyone have information on this?

Please consider sharing details of your cluster groups meetings on this listserve.

Nik also asked about Facebook groups and TESOLANZ does run a Facebook group , TESOLANZ Talk

We continued to discuss diagnostic assessment - follow the thread here and I posted to my blog and Ministry of Education resources that can help you with assessment and planning for your learners. Read my post here.

The next Ministry of Education funding round is fast approaching - 1st August.. At this point in the year we should be looking at making judgements based on student performance in the wider school and perhaps upskilling other teachers to make these judgments. How do you do this?

We have also continued to discuss the changes to the position of ESOL in the NZC.  Have you discussed these changes in your networks and have you submitted your thoughts in the feedback yet either in a group you belong to or individually? You can provide feedback here. You can follow the various threads on this topic in the archive.

A note on accessing the archive - to access the archives you do need to enter a username and password. New members will need to reset their password before you can enter for the first time.

Language weeks and events for schools

Matariki Dates: Setting 2 June 2021, Rising 2-5 July, Period 2-10 July 

Kiribati Language Week: 11-17 July 2021

Cook Islands Language Week: Sunday 1 August to Saturday 7 August 2021

Events

Registration for CLESOL  is now open- St Cuthbert’s, Auckland 08 - 09 October 2021. Funding is available to attend for PPTA members. Find out more here. As other funding options become available I will let you know.

On other communities

Primary ESOL Online discussed supporting our multilingual students and shared

• Multilingual notices and forms. Education.Govt.NZ  Your school can use these notices to communicate more effectively with the families of English language learners.

• Supporting bilingual and multilingual learning pathways

• Translated phrases for schools - NB these come from the UK

• Bilingual Snippets poses ‘typical questions’ asked by parents/caregivers about raising children as bilinguals in a family and offers easy to understand responses to these. Language of commands and instructions in many different languages - both available through  Languaging Minds Limited.

In addition Janet recommended taking a look at Strategies for Literacy and Mathematics & Statistics from the Ministry of Education. Janet found one briefing report particularly relevant to our ESOL community - Briefing Note: Strengthening literacy and te reo matatini, MOE  26 November 2020