Past Events

Presented by Gae Nastasi

Monday 15th May 5pm – 6pm (via Zoom)

About Gae: Gae is currently QATESOL President and EAL/D Coordinator (Secondary) for Metropolitan South Region, Department of Education Queensland. Having trained as an EAL and French teacher, she has been teaching English as an Additional Language for 40 years, mainly in Brisbane secondary schools, from on-arrival to Senior English. She has also taught English overseas at all levels, from beginners to advanced, and with both adolescents and adults. She is interested in curriculum and pedagogy supporting language learning.

About Gae’s presentation: Speaking is a difficult skill to develop, particularly within the constraints of an EAL classroom which can be an artificial environment with regard to meaningful communication. If we consider that the primary goal of language learning is to communicate, and that to communicate means to create meaning, then it is essential that the classroom creates the conditions for this through the adoption of appropriate pedagogical practices which facilitate oral meaning making. This practical session looks at communicative pair or group activities which facilitate meaningful communicative interaction within the classroom. These strategies have all been used successfully in the classroom. These strategies require little preparation or expense to undertake in the classroom.

A recording of this presentation is avaliabel free to members or at a cost to non-members. Pleaes contact contact.tastesol@gmail.com for additional information.

2025 Term 2 Forum – Structured Speaking Activities for the EAL Classroom

Presented by Karen Grice

Karen Grice is a Senior Educational Consultant for TAFE Queensland, inspiring teachers to create engaging and impactful learning environments. Karen began her teaching journey as an AMEP teacher, working with clients in the Special Preparatory Program, before moving into digital literacy roles to champion the use of technology in the language classroom. Believing in the transformational role of learning, Karen has worked in roles leading teaching teams and co-delivers trauma-informed workshops across TAFE Queensland. Karen has been actively involved in promoting community-based classes in the AMEP and recently lead a community-based cyber safety education program for refugee parents.

Cyber Safety for AMEP Parents is an innovative project that delivers English language training and cyber safety education to AMEP parents. Underpinned by the belief that community-based education can enhance the learning experience, the project was delivered to AMEP parents in 3 primary schools in collaboration with Community Hubs Australia. Using cohort-specific resources and hands-on learning opportunities, the project aimed to equip parents with the skills and knowledge they need to understand cyber safety risks, and learn how to monitor and manage their children’s online activity.

Monday 28th August 2023.

Presented by David Gutteridge

Monday 31st March 6pm – 7pm (via Zoom)

David will discuss his published study, a study of the selection of Englishes in ELICOS classrooms. This research investigates the apparent disconnects between teachers’ perceptions of their use of Australian English in the classroom and what interviews with teachers revealed about their actual practices.

A recording of this presentation is avaliabel free to members or a a cost to non-members. Pleaes contact contact.tastesol@gmail.com for additional information.

2025 Term 1 flyer

Presented by Mat Hines, Teaching and Learning Manager at Learning for Employment, a network of 6 adult community education centres providing SEE and AMEP across Melbourne’s West and North West, Ballarat and Geelong.

Mat spoke about two recent innovative projects that involved low-level students co-designing courses to better support their learning.  The SEE program ‘Learning Bridge’ was an extended orientation course, while the AMEP ‘Empowering Afghan Women’ project was a community-employer-provider collaboration, focusing on the education, settlement, social participation and employment needs of Afghan women studying in Melbourne’s West. Both projects also highlighted the value of funded bilingual classroom support and aimed to explore new ways of delivering SEE and AMEP.

Mat has been working in education for 20 years, primarily in EAL. He has worked in the public, private and community sectors in Australia, Italy and the UK. Mat’s current role focuses on project management, resource development, internal quality assurance and professional development.

Date: Monday 26^th August 5pm-6pm

Location: Online: Zoom

Presented by renownded speech pathologist Rosalie Martin.

Rosalie presented her work on “the impact of trauma on learning language, especially in the context of our students – what we see but may not recognise in our classrooms; and identifying how and when trauma impacts learning and what strategies may be helpful to deliver learning effectively.”

TasTESOL members can request access to the recording. If you would like to hear the recording, please contact contact.tastesol@gmail.com

Monday 28th May, 2024

To read more about Rosalie Martin, please see the links below:

https://cms.australianoftheyear.org.au/recipients/rosalie-martin

https://rosaliemartin.com/speaking/

 

TasTESOL was pleased to host international presenter Emily Bryson as our second term 4 forum presenter.

From Scotland, Emily has an extensive background in EAL. She is a teacher educator, author and graphic facilitator with over 20 years teaching experience. This forum will provide EAL teachers with an additional ‘string’ to add to your teaching toolkit. Graphic facilitation is the use of simple, hand-drawn visual to support your teaching. It is simple, engaging and fun to use. Graphic facilitation is something that everyone can do, you don’t have to be an artist!

For more information on graphic facilitation in the EAL classroom and on Emily’s work, please visit https://www.emilybrysonelt.com/

Tuesday 14th Novermber, 2023.

Flyer for past forum  Bryson forum 14th November, 2023

Presented by Mary Blake

Readers! What’s happened to levelled readers? What are decodable or alphabetic readers? What are catch-up readers? What’s the best for you?

From the EAL Library shelves! A selection of EAL resources and then let’s discuss how to use them will be presented.

Mary Blake is renowned around Tasmania for her knowledge and dedication to literature. Mary took over running the EAL library in the mid-2000s and has moved the collection twice now: Once to Derwent Park in 2010 and again to Lindisfarne in 2016.

Mary has been an EAL teacher and EAL librarian for a significant portion of her career.

Thursday 19th October, 2023

If you are interested in a recording, please contact contact.tastesol@gmail.com.

Term 1 – Joint Construction and Guided Instruction: Benefits for Tertiary English Language Learners

TasTESOL was pleased to host Emily Morgan, PhD University of Tasmania student, as our first forum presenter in 2023. Emily presented on Joint Construction and Guided Instruction: Benefits for Tertiary English Language Learners.

The Teaching/Learning Cycle and the Gradual Release of Responsibility teaching model have both been used regularly in primary classrooms with young learners, and their effects have been studied. While not all researchers support the use of these teaching models, the general consensus is that they provide a strong scaffold for teaching a wide variety of subjects, most particularly English. These teaching models have not yet been widely studied in the contexts of older learners or English as a foreign language. In her PhD research, Emily used the Gradual Release of Responsibility model to teach Japanese university students different English writing genres. Emily’s talk focused on her observations of the Joint Construction/Guided Instruction stage:

In this stage, students work as a whole class with the facilitation of the teacher to jointly construct texts or fragments of texts. This stage occurs after direct instruction and before pair or group work, as an intermediary opportunity to pool knowledge and consolidate understanding of the concepts before the teacher steps further away. One of the problems identified early on was students’ unwillingness to contribute, which at first seemed insurmountable. Ultimately, though, through persistence and adaptation, I found that the activities offered strong benefits to students and teacher, making it worth persevering with.

Date – Monday 6^th March, 2023

Time – 5pm – 5:45pm

TasTESOL hosted LWA who showcased a suite of newly developed resources, funded by the Department of Home Affairs and aligned to the EAL Framework. The session featured a pre-launch look at:

• a new suite of multi-modal booklets for EAL learners with emerging literacies who have little or no prior educational experience
• the newly updated AMEPOnline website; a publicly available, interactive website with eLearning content, and
• new Digital Literacies Framework, Guide and companion Teaching Resources – a new framework, teacher guide, lesson ideas and materials to support the integration of digital literacies into real life learning experiences.

Useful Links

Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) – Background (homeaffairs.gov.au)

AMEPOnline (homeaffairs.gov.au)

EAL Framework “101”: A Beginner’s Guide to the Victorian EAL Framework Curriculum- VicTESOL

EAL Framework 101 (2): How to approach delivery and assessment of a group of units – VicTESOL

Term 3, 2022  English Language Learners and Trauma Informed Learning

TasTESOL is excited to announce that Victoria Wilson, who will shortly complete a PhD at University of Queensland in trauma-informed English language teaching to adults, will be presenting at our next online forum.

Victoria has been teaching ESL and EFL since 2004, starting her career in Japan. In 2011 she was living in coastal Fukushima at the time of the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, which killed 18,000 people and left many more displaced. Victoria continued teaching in the disaster zone for several months afterward and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after returning to Australia. In 2014 she began teaching ELICOS at University of Southern Queensland and found that many of her students – both former refugees and international students – had experienced significant trauma. A lack of specialised research in how best to support their learning led her to start her PhD.

In this presentation, Victoria will discuss some of the effects of PTSD on learning and engagement and explore evidence-based strategies for minimising (post-traumatic) stress and maximising learning.

A copy of the Power Point Presentation is available here: English Language Learners & Trauma Informed Learning (PPP)

If you would like a copy of the recording, please contact contact.tastesol@gmail.com