Blog Posts

Language Teacher Network – Sydney South West – Term 2 meeting

5/6/2019

The Language Teacher Network – Sydney South West will hold its Term 2 meeting on Thursday of Week 8.

Date: Thursday 20 June 2019
Time: 1:30-3.30pm
Agenda: Support teachers to further understand their students from refugees background and to provide ideas and tools to cater for these students and their special needs in the languages classroom.

Please enrol via MyPL course code NR24996, Languages Network Meetings 2019.

For further information, please email Suzanne Safi or call 96319419.

Draft K-10 syllabuses consultation – Modern Hebrew and Russian

4/6/2019

The draft K-10 syllabuses for Modern Hebrew and Russian will be released on 11 June. This also includes a review of the Life Skills outcomes and content.

The syllabuses documents are available for download via NESA’s website.

Have your say by attending a consultation meeting held between 4-6pm on the following dates and venues:
- Monday 24 June Club Rose Bay

- Wednesday 26 June NSW School of Languages, Petersham
- Saturday 27 July St Alexander Nevsky Russian Saturday School, Homebush.

Life Skills targeted consultation meeting will be held on:
- Wednesday 3 July NESA Office, Sydney City.

Draft syllabus consultation meetings contribute to 2 hours of NESA Registered PD addressing 6.2.2 and 7.4.2. Please visit NESA’s syllabus development page for more information.

Do you have a question about the new K-10 syllabuses? Join us on Yammer – Languages NSW (7-12)

3/6/2019

The Languages and Culture team are trialling "Yammer chat" from 3:30-4pm every Monday and Thursday during term time. You can join us live, or catch up on the conversation at a time which suits you. We can answer your questions, provide feedback or just share professional dialogue.

Yammer is the Department’s social media platform. This is a forum you can access anytime or if you prefer, you can join in real time.

If you prefer, you can send us your questions via an anonymous Google Form and we will paste your question to Yammer and provide an answer or feedback, as appropriate.

You can download the Yammer app to your phone or access it from the portal (under ‘My applications’). Join us in the Languages NSW (7-12) group.

NESA releases new course performance descriptors for languages K-10 syllabuses

3/6/2019

New course performance descriptors are available for the following syllabuses:
- Arabic
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Modern Greek
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese.

View the new course performance descriptors.

For more information, contact:
Penny Vlies
Senior Project Officer, Curriculum and Assessment

Expressions of interest – language-specific writing groups for Stages 4 and 5

30/5/2019

Expressions of interest are invited from teachers/head teachers of languages who would like to be part of language-specific writing teams to develop language-specific resources for the NSW Department of Education’s curriculum website, including sample scope and sequences, units of work and assessment tasks for Stages 4 and 5.

Each language-specific writing team will consist of up to 3 teachers for each of the following languages:
- Arabic
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Modern Greek.

Language-specific writers are required to have expertise in the target language and to be experienced in programming the new K-10 syllabuses for Stages 4 and 5. Applicants must have successfully completed the Languages K-10 syllabus familiarisation and planning workshop in 2018 (RG03190 or RG03191).

Successful applicants will be required to attend 1 full-day of training at our offices at Oxford St, Darlinghurst, followed by 4 writing days, at a location and on dates negotiated by each writing team. Successful applicants will also be required to complete Languages K-10 syllabus familiarisation and planning eCourse (RG04277), as part of their training.

The training day will be held on Monday 29 July 2019.

The Languages and Culture team will provide release for the training day and subsequent writing days. Travel and accommodation costs may also be reimbursed, if required.

To apply, please complete the attached EOI form and email as a PDF to Marcela Ayas by 5pm Friday 29 June 2019.

For further information contact Marcela Ayas, A/Language Officer on 9266 8540.

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7-10 programming support and resources – new language syllabuses

29/5/2019

The Languages and Culture team has published support for teachers 7-10 in implementing the new syllabuses:
- guidelines, which include information and advice on what you need to include in your program
- sample unit of work templates (we will include more samples soon)
- a backward mapping tool to plan your units of work
- information on embedding learning across the curriculum content.

All of the above can be accessed from the languages landing page for Stages 4 and 5 of the NSW Department of Education's website.

Also, we are gradually adding support to each of the language-specific pages, so please check back regularly to see what's new!

Language Teacher Network – Sydney South – Term 2 meeting

29/5/2019

The Language Teacher Network – Sydney South will hold its Term 2 meeting on Monday 17 June 2019. The meeting will be a registered professional learning on 'Shifting thinking – new K-10 language syllabuses'.

Date: Monday 17 June 2019

Time: 3:30-5:30pm (presentation of module will commence at 4:00pm)

Venue: Kogarah High School

Afternoon tea will be provided.

Please enrol via MyPL course code RG04794 and choose the appropriate session (Sydney South). Teachers from all sectors are welcome to attend.

For further information please contact Gaelle Homma.

Language Teacher Network – Sydney Greater West – Term 2 meeting

28/5/2019

The Language Teacher Network – Sydney Greater West will hold its Term 2 meeting on Monday 17 June 2019. The meeting will be a registered professional learning on 'Shifting thinking – new K-10 language syllabuses'.

Date: Monday 17 June 2019
Time: 3:30-5:30pm
Venue: The Ponds High School

Please enrol via MyPL course code RG04794 and choose the appropriate session. Teachers from all sectors are welcome to attend.

For further information please contact Amanda Singh.

Mentoring program for secondary languages teachers 2019-2020 – VLMN

27/5/2019

In 2017, the Languages and Culture team successfully established in the Virtual Language Mentoring Network (VLMN) to support beginning and/or isolated language teachers 7-12, especially those without the support of a head teacher with languages background. A beginning teacher is one in their first 2 years of teaching in metro areas and in their first 5 years in rural and remote areas.

These teachers often work as the only language teacher in the school and may have specific needs which cannot always be met at school level.

The 2019-2020 cohort of the VLMN includes a Language Officer, Evia Kyriacou, from the Languages and Culture team, 2 lead mentors, 1 beginning mentor and up to 10 school-based language teacher mentors (selected via expressions of interest) working to support the mentee teachers.

Expressions of interest are invited from experienced language teachers of:

- Chinese (1 mentor required)
- French (1 mentor required)
- German (1 mentor required)
- Italian (1 mentor required)
- Japanese (5 mentors required)
- Spanish (1 mentor required).

Mentors will be providing support from Term 3 2019 until the end of Term 4 2020 and relevant professional learning will be provided for all successful applicants.

The VLMN will:

- identify professional learning needs for mentees and mentors
- implement evidence-based mentoring practices to develop the capacity of mentees
- support teachers of languages in working towards and maintaining accreditation at a range of career stages
build the capacity of virtual and face-to-face language teacher networks.

The VLMN will begin with a centrally-located 3-day conference for both mentors and mentees. The Languages and Culture team will provide release and related expenses to participants to facilitate mentoring support and to attend targeted professional learning.

Please complete the Google survey, and download and complete the attached EOI form and submit by 5pm on Friday 14 June 2019 to evia.kyriacou@det.nsw.edu.au

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Welcome to new team member – Marcela Ayas

24/5/2019

The Languages and Culture team (Secondary Education) is delighted to welcome Marcela Ayas to our team.

Marcela will be acting in the role of Language Officer until October 2019 and brings a wealth of experience to the role, as her substantive position is Head Teacher, Languages at Westfields Sports HS.