​We have added a new page to our website – Teaching tools – where you can find information on feedback, learning journals and a new support document on visible thinking in languages.

This document supports our recent statewide staffroom, and we’ve had lots of requests from teachers wanting more, so we hope you like what we’ve done. Visible thinking tools and strategies in the languages classroom can lead to increased student engagement and deeper levels of understanding, so we think our support document is a ‘must-read’, as part of Elective PD.

We explore how to create a culture of thinking in your classroom, tools and strategies you can use, and provide explicit links to teaching and learning activities on our website.

Dear language teachers,

As you are delving into learning from home once more, please take a look at the support the Languages and Culture team has on offer.

- Are you part of our Languages statewide staffroom on Teams yet? It takes less than a minute to join by filling out this brief entry survey. Our staffroom has over 680 DoE teachers connecting with each other. You will be able to ask questions, access direct support from the Languages and Culture team and explore over 690 teacher-shared resources for Stages 4-6. There is also access to our curriculum resources and our YouTube channel. If you are a user of Yammer, you will be able to access that through the staffroom too. It's a one-stop shop.

- If you are looking for support with Stage 6, our curriculum website has sample speaking questions and sample reading and listening activities for most modern languages and courses, organised by topics. 

- The Department of Education is continuously updating the Learning from home website adding resources for all subjects and levels.

Thank you for all your hard work always. Please reach out to any member of our team for any kind of support. 

Languages and Culture team

Language teachers 7-12 in NSW public schools ​– if you only do one thing today, please check your notifications are correctly set up in our statewide staffroom in Microsoft Teams. 

If you're not a regular user of Teams, go to the little circle at the top right, with your initials or your photo. Click on the circle, then select Settings, then Notifications, then set 'Missed activity email' to Daily. This way, you'll get an email once a day summarising anything you've missed. Note: You do need to be using the Teams app, not the internet version  – you download the app from Microsoft Office 365 within the portal.

We're just finding many teachers are missing important dates or information because they're not using Teams regularly, so email notifications will help avoid this.

If you're a regular user of Teams, you've probably already set up notifications in a way that works for you.

If you haven't joined the statewide staffroom yet, please take our 1-minute entry survey, logging in with your @det email.

PS We know you actually have a million other things you'll need to do today, but we just wanted to get your attention. :-)

We have updated our notifications support document so you can check your notifications in our statewide staffroom in MS Teams – please take 5 mins to ensure you're getting access to the information you need.

We have also recorded a support session, for those unable to make any of the time slots – ​the recording is 17 minutes: https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/1d081f80-a249-443f-af61-cd84a58a2a1f

​The statewide staffroom supports language teachers 7-12 in NSW public schools.

Do you need a little help finding your way around the statewide staffroom in MS Teams?

Update: This session works best if you are using the MS Teams app on your laptop (rather than accessing through your internet browser).

Over the next 2 weeks, we're offering 5 'drop-in' sessions to support you in navigating Microsoft Teams. We'll focus mainly on setting up your notifications, so you're not missing critical information. You only need to attend one session (it's not a series!).

Just click on the link below at whichever time/date suits you best below, at the time of the meeting:

• Wednesday 17 March, 8-8:30 am
• Wednesday 17 March, 3:30-4 pm
• Monday 22 March, 1-1:30 pm
• Thursday 25 March, 8-8:30 am
• Thursday 25 March, 4-4:30 pm


• Please note these sessions are for language teachers K-12 from NSW public schools.​

We now have 436 teachers in our statewide staffroom, and it is slowly growing every day. 

The languages statewide staffroom supports language teachers 7-12 in NSW public schools. You can also access direct support from the Languages and Culture team and search over 400 shared resources for Stages 4-6.
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Complete our short entry survey to join. Log in using your department email.

As the year comes to its long overdue end, we don't want to add to your workload but if you haven't joined our statewide staffroom yet, please take a moment to join – we now have over 300 members!

Our new staffroom is on Microsoft Teams, with Yammer embedded.

Please complete the entry survey.

We're looking forward to seeing you there.

We have had 140 teachers join in just 3 days!

Our new staffroom is on Microsoft Teams, with Yammer embedded.

As part of this transition, we will need you to complete a very short (<1 minute) 'entry survey'. We cannot move you over until you complete the survey.

We're looking forward to seeing you there.

As we've mentioned before, we are moving our statewide staffroom to Microsoft Teams. As part of this transition, we will need you to complete a very short (<1 minute) 'entry survey'. We cannot move you over until you complete the survey.

The survey will enable us to capture everyone's details, which is important for our data collections as we report on our successes to the senior executive – things like how many teachers are interacting with us, and which schools they're from.

Our Yammer group – Languages NSW (7-12) will stay!! It will be embedded into the new Teams space, which will offer Yammer and so much more.

The new staffroom is for languages teachers 7-12 in NSW public schools. Our primary colleagues are also welcome to join, if they teach at a NSW public school.

This blog/email subscription will continue for colleagues from all sectors.

We now have 550 language teachers interacting in our virtual statewide staffroom – have you joined yet? We've created this infographic to lead you through how to join and get involved. We look forward to seeing you there soon.