Interesting and impressive video clips. They switch one language to the other. It looks very natural and show a good flow of conversation. Being bilingual is cool, and trilingual is even cooler!

This is a follow-up posting of [AEF] Korean drum (장구) performance, Campsie Public School. I think it is worthwhile sharing Eun Young ssn's comments on her students' Korean drum performance with others. Please see below.

"I think this photo represents our Korean Bilingual Program at Campsie Public School so well. [...omit...] The left hand has to go up and down as you hit the drum with the stick, while the right hand goes to the sides as the stick remains on the drum in between the strokes. Can you imagine the drummers' brains? The second language is there for the bilingual brain development, Irene's brain is fully lit up for the day since we run this drumming class at 8 in the morning. As you already know, Irene comes to the Korean class everyday for an hour on top of the morning activities and the lessons are prepared in the CLIL approach. (She has been learning about 'Where does bread/rice come from?' this term.) More importantly, the students get to enjoy the music and feel that they can learn and achieve something and it is so much fun. No wonder the Korean Bilingual Class students have done so well in NAPLAN..."

The Towards an Asia Literate NSW Conference on 11 August has been opened up to include all teachers.

It’s an amazing opportunity to hear ABC journalist Jane Hutcheon and James Hudson, CEO of the NSW Australia China Business Council, speak on the implications of working with Asia for our schools. School leaders will also be presenting their school’s journey towards Asia literacy.

Register now and spread the word in your school!
https://www.regodirect.com.au/towardsasialiteratensw

Applications are now open for the 2015 ELTF program. See the media release on the News page for more information.

Please note that the closing date is SUNDAY 6 JULY 2014. If you are applying for the program you must seek your principal’s statement of support as soon as possible.  As the application closing date falls in the school holiday period, it is imperative that you obtain this statement before holidays begin.  The statement of support is a key consideration in assessing applications, those not accompanied by a statement will not be passed on to selection panels and no extension of the closing date will be given.

A free face-to-face session on the benefits of the Endeavour fellowship and on how best to complete the application forms will be held from 4.00 – 5.00 pm on Thursday  26 June 2014 at the Department of Education and Communities offices at Oxford Street. All teachers are welcome.

Please RSVP to Lyndall Franks at lyndall.franks@det.nsw.edu.au if you would like to attend this session.

for Professional Learning Conference for NSW Teachers of Korean 2014.
More information will be available soon.

Dear Colleagues,

The Department of Education and Communities of NSW would like to invite all Korean language teachers and academics to share with their colleagues, ideas for educational theory and practice in regards to the Professional Learning Conference for NSW Teachers of Korean 2014 which will be held on Friday 12 September 2014.

You are all most welcome to apply for an expression of interest using the form attached and send it to me (hee.j.choi@det.nsw.edu.au). We would also like to hear your ideas for what you would be most interested in as an audience in relation to Korean language and culture.

If you have a vague idea about a topic but you are not ready to give a detailed overview yet, please do not hesitate to contact me personally so we can go through it together and conclude to something more concrete.

Your experience is extremely valuable and the Department of Education is giving you the opportunity to share it with everyone interested in enriching the understanding as well as the impart of language, culture and Koreaness itself.

Looking forward to your prompt response

Best regards,
Sophie Choi

On AEF Conference Day 3, my group visited an impressive Year 5 Korean language classroom (and we also did the Chinese and Tamil class observation, but I'm going to brief the Korean class obsevation only). The class had students at mixed levels/competences and from different cultural background i.e. from new arrival Korean students (not yet familiar with English instructions) to non-Korean background kids. Homebush PS offers three languages to all students. Korean heritage/background students are to learn Korean. If a student are not from those three language background, they just choose one of them and learn the language. In this way, the school is able to embed Asia perspectives across the curriculum.

It might not be ideal for many language teachers to accommodate all different levels of students in a classroom. I totally understand as I had once had a class consisting of 25 students form Years 7 to 10 at all differnt levels. I think the diffentiated programming with appropriate strategies should work in this circumstance: Differentiated programming sounds like a big 'term', but it is really simple educational concept. Just providing multiple tasks (assignments) designed (tailored) for students of different levels of achievement etc...  I'm not sure whether the teacher (Ms Haeryun Martin) did her lesson with this differentiation concept or not, but she did it wonderfully with no sweat: building contexts and scaffolding as a whole, dividing her class into 3 groups and getting them on three different major tasks, teacher attention to group by group, putting teacher's expectation for peer support while doing tasks in groups/individually, and then finally the class 'story-telling' activity with their teacher.

See the slideshow below for the Korean lesson gist at Homebush Public School. 

Observed a well-designed ICT enhanced language lessson at Homebush Boys High School. The teacher, ms Kyung-ae Yu is an iPad guru - she has plenty of lesson ideas and skills with iPad, and presented them in Korean workshops and PL days. The class we walked in was a Year 10 Korean background/heritage class - of course, at mixed levels and abilities. The lesson was about Korean public holidays and the story behind them: viewing an interesting but still very short 'student-made' video clip (students created the video clips as their group project prior to the lesson), and then doing the jeopardy game with iPad (Whiteboard app for students). Boys seriously engaged in this game-typed Korean cultrue lesson through Korean instructions. It was interesting to observe the class and think about how to get our boys to learn languages..., for now, put this thought for another time.

Follow this link for Pre-created PowerPoint Jeopardy Downloads.

See below for more photos. I wanted to take more photos but the classroom was too dark to get good photos.

Dear members,

Below are the details of the 2014 KOLTA AGM and please find attached agenda.

Date:  27th June 2014 (Friday)
Time:  4.00 – 6.30pm
Venue: The Hoju Dong A Korean Daily - Ground Floor, 570 Blaxland Rd Eastwood       

Public parking and street parking is available around the venue and please press the bell on the door when you arrive. Light refreshment and dinner will be provided. Please advise your attendance as soon as possible for catering purposes. Email: JIN.YOO@det.nsw.edu.au

Looking forward to seeing you there,

Jin Sook

I'm not going to 'bla bla bla' about the huge success of the Bilingual Schools Program at Campsie PS. As many NSW Korean language teachers know, it is now well-known through many conferences, workshops and media exposures in both Australia and Korea since the introduction of the Korean bilingual program in 2010.

This afternoon, four presenters from Campsie PS truly walked us (the audience there) through their bilingual program. Click on the slideshow below to taste a bit about it. You might also be interested in watching the video clips.

Just one thing I'd like to mention here, Campsie PS provided the 'measurable' outcomes/evidences of the value language education: Students in the bilingual classes for the last four years (taking them out of their main stream classes for 5 hours per week) showed outstanding results in NAPLAN.