Blog Posts

HSC-style oral examination support

23/8/2021

The Languages and Culture team is organising professional learning for conducting and marking HSC-style oral examinations on Wednesday 1 September 2021, at 4 pm.

This professional learning will consist of:
a. general information session – where are we now and why?
b. general session on conducting/marking an HSC-style oral exam, addressing your concerns
c. language-specific collaborative marking groups, with experienced markers.

The session will run for approximately 1.5 hours.

Please register using this form by 5 pm Sunday 29 August. We will forward you the Zoom link on Wednesday morning, the day of the session.

The session is open to teachers of all sectors – please complete the form to receive the meeting link.

The session will not be recorded due to the use of breakout rooms.

Statewide staff meeting – principles of exam setting

9/8/2021

The languages statewide staff meeting in Week 7 will explore the process of the HSC examination setting. Join us on Monday 23 August, 4-5 pm, to hear from Adele Burke, Senior Assessment Officer at NESA.

We will explore:
- setting examination questions
- writing stimulus passages
- writing marking guidelines.

You must enrol in the session on MyPL to receive the link to the online meeting. Search for course code NR29242, and select the session for Monday 23 August.

The link for each statewide staff meeting is different, so you need to enrol in each session we offer.

We look forward to seeing you there! This session will not be recorded, so please make sure to join us live.

If you haven't joined our statewide staffroom yet, please complete our short entry survey to join. Log in using your department email.

prinicples_of_exam_setting.pdf
File Size:	100 kb
File Type:	pdf

Statewide staff meeting – recording and slide deck

4/8/2021

On Tuesday 3 August, 2021 we delivered our statewide staff meeting with guest presenter Kate Thompson, Stage 6 Advisor. Thank you to the teachers who joined us for the live session. For those who weren’t able to make it, the recording is now live on our YouTube channel and the slide deck is attached.
We will continue with our Stage 6 focus in our Week 7 meeting with guest presenter Adele Burke, Senior Assessment Officer, Examining and Testing, NESA.

Virtual Network – conference survey

2/8/2021

The Languages and Culture team is seeking input from our regional and remote language teachers regarding our planned Term 3 2021 conference. This is a targeted event for language teachers 7-12 in rural and remote public schools who do not have a local geographic network available to them.

We would like to find out your preferences regarding:

- format of the conference
- timing of the conference
- areas of professional learning needs.

We would appreciate your feedback in completing this survey by 5 pm, Friday 6 August. It takes about 1 minute to complete.

We will be in touch soon about our Semester 2 professional learning plans.

If you have any questions please contact Coreena Allen or Evia Kyriacou.

NESA – 2022 HSC exam development applications

2/8/2021

NESA's 2022 HSC exam development application is still open – you can find more information on the NESA website.

Chief Examiner – closing date Wednesday 14 July 2021.
Committee member – closing date Friday 13 August 2021.
Assessor applications – closing date Friday 12 November 2021.

Resources and professional learning for all languages from SICLE

29/7/2021

SICLE is organising a number of language specific PL events, focusing on strategies for online language learning. All events will be advertised on the Open Language Portal under the Resources for All Languages button and all teachers are welcome. Currently on the Portal there is information about free online workshops, for Greek, Arabic, Chinese and Hindi. More will be added in the coming weeks.
You can also explore sample programming resources, as well as generic resources that may be useful for the teaching and learning of all languages.

New support document – visible thinking in the languages classroom

21/7/2021

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.

Stage 6 Literacy – languages

21/7/2021

New literacy resource pack for Stage 6!

Stage 6 Literacy in context – Writing in languages is now live! This suite of resources is designed to support student writing development in languages based on current research to support student literacy.
These Stage 6 resources have been created to enable teachers to use content they are working with in class to improve the quality of students' written responses in English (to a stimulus text in the target language) and in student responses in the language they are learning. They contain videos and downloadable activities on subject vocabulary, planning for writing and student writing and feedback.
You can use these resources individually, as a faculty, or as part of a whole-school literacy team. By using these resources, you can also register hours for Elective PD.

Statewide staff meeting – HSC monitoring

21/7/2021

Our statewide staff meeting in Week 4 will explore the requirements for developing Stage 6 monitoring procedures. Join us on Tuesday 3 August, 4-5 pm, to hear from the Stage 6 Advisor, Kate Thompson, from the Department of Education.

We will explore:
- NESA requirements and legislation
- the department's HSC monitoring advice
- what schools must do
- what records to maintain
- staff responsibilities.

You must enrol in the session on MyPL to receive the link to the online meeting. Search for course code NR29242, and select the session for Tuesday 3 August.

The link for each statewide staff meeting is different, so you do need to enrol in each session we offer.

We look forward to seeing you there! The session will be recorded for those unable to join us.

If you haven't joined our statewide staffroom yet, please complete our short entry survey to join. Log in using your department email.

hsc_monitoring_flyer.pdf
File Size:	75 kb
File Type:	pdf

Stage 6 Latin – support for Continuers and Extension

13/7/2021

We are very, VERY excited to announce that we have just published 3 new resources for Stage 6 Latin:

- a sample assessment task for the Preliminary course on Catullus poem 50
- HSC examination in Latin Continuers – advice for students
- HSC examination in Latin Extension – advice for students.

Please note that we published an earlier version of the sample assessment task, however we had to make some changes to the outcomes and the marking guidelines. Some of these changes were to enable students to access the task as a practice, without providing them with any answers. We also included more background information for teachers. If you had previously downloaded a copy of the task, please discard it and replace it with the new version.

You can access this new support from our Latin Stage 6 page.