After two years at Mount St Benedict College as a classroom teacher and Head of Department, I'm leaving the College to channel all my energies into my business. This decision hasn’t been easy and comes from the realisation that I could no longer do justice to the 3-day-a-week HoD/teaching role, and the ongoing maintenance and development of ADECS . In many ways, this was of my own making – having expanded the scope of the HoD’s role, I created a workload which would ultimately prove unsustainable. Something had to give, and my commitment to the business has always been my priority.
My time at Bennies was incredibly rewarding – being back in the classroom reminded me of the realities, challenges and joys of teaching and leading a department, and I am grateful for the many connections I made with staff and students during my time. I was fortunate to have been able to develop and evaluate many of the resources I now use in my courses, and I am particularly indebted to the languages staff for their professionalism and commitment as I shifted the faculty to new models of curriculum and assessment design.
Looking forward, I am excited to finally have the time to not just maintain the business, but to grow it. First up will be reconnecting with client schools, and working on some collaborations with other providers. Can't wait :)
Experienced teachers of HSC Extension Languages are warmly invited to a day of collaboration and resource creation around the new prescriptions.
DATE: Thursday 27th June 2024 (2nd last day of Term 2)
TIME: 830am – 3pm
VENUE: Loreto Kirribilli 85 Carabella Street KIRRIBILLI 2061
COST: $50.00 (includes admin costs, lunch and morning tea)
Working in language groups, teachers will unpack the new prescribed texts and issues to generate tailored, implementation-ready materials in time for course commencement in Term 4. This is an opportunity to work with your Extension colleagues to develop practical, relevant and useful resources, in a relaxed and informal setting.
Click here to register, or here to download a flyer.
For an overview of the new prescriptions per language, including crossovers in themes between languages, check out this blogpost here.
For everything else, get in touch: alison.dean@adecs.com.au
*NEW* Face-to-face, NESA-accredited course: Assessment and task design in Languages
Excited to announce one of two new face-to-face PL courses on offer this year. Having explored task-based/supported learning and its compatibility with the new K10 Modern Languages syllabus in 2023, we now move to how to assess it.
Assessing by task is quite different to assessing by macro skill, and this course breaks down the elements of the process, drawing on the latest in assessment theory and principles of Understanding by Design to deliver a clear and cohesive approach. In a nutshell, participants will explore:
The course is a follow on from the programming workshop of last year, however it is not a prerequisite to have attended that event, as the core principles will be revisited throughout the course. Assessment is my 'thing' 🤓 and as was the case in the programming workshop, there will be loads of samples and resources profiled throughout the course. For more information, check out my blog post, or to register, click through below.
*NEW* Face-to-face course: Leveraging AI for resource creation in Languages
Over the summer, I had a great time re-working my online TTA course Getting onboard with Chatgpt in Languages into a new face-to-face workshop. It’s called Leveraging AI for resource creation in Languages and builds on the original course content with more prompts and app combinations to support the teaching, learning and assessment of Languages. For those not familiar with the original course, I essentially demonstrate how to use Chatgpt and other AI platforms to:
1. Create stimulus reading texts, listening texts and audio/visual texts
2. Differentiate texts for different proficiency levels
3. Generate comprehension questions, games and exercises
4. Create assessment tasks, marking criteria, rubrics and sample responses
5. Generate course descriptions, report comments, risks assessments and newsletter articles
6. Get teaching advice or another perspective on a text/issue, and heaps more…
I've selected a few other apps to profile that have enormous potential for lightening the load of teachers, including one that is going to be of particular interest to HSC Extension teachers preparing for the new prescriptions later this year.
Exploring what AI can do is a passion project of mine and I can't wait to show participants what's possible, and how it has assisted me in my teaching. Click through for details of the course below.
Face-to-face course: Programming the new NSW K10 Modern Languages syllabus
2024 is the year that the new K10 Modern Languages syllabus is to be first taught in NSW schools. For schools and teachers looking for PL on the new syllabus and how to implement it, I will be running the workshop Programming the new NSW K10 Modern Languages syllabus on various dates throughout the year. The course is face-to-face, NESA-accredited for 6 hours of PL and available to K-10 teachers of all languages and sectors.
For those not able to attend a workshop, I am available to come into your school and present the course in person. In 2023, I worked onsite in over 30 schools throughout NSW, delivering the course and conducting workshops with individual teachers, faculties or school clusters. I believe PL is best delivered face-to-face and I love working with teachers in different contexts.
Please check out some of the testimonials from schools I worked with last year. To make an enquiry, or if you already have a preferred date in mind, you can leave your details here or email me at alison.dean@adecs.com.au.
Details and registration for the Term 2 workshop (Friday 24th May- Week 4) are now available and can be accessed via the link below.
***COMING SOON***
Online course: School-based assessment in HSC Languages
At the 2023 annual Chinese Language Teachers Association conference, I presented an assessment model for the Continuers languages courses, which in its design, addresses two issues that frequently come up in my discussions with Stage 6 teachers:
Later this term, I will publish an online, self-guided course on the Teacher Training Australia (TTA) website, where participants will be walked through the model. In doing so, they will gain:
This course is for anyone who might be:
I will post details of the course when it goes live, however if you'd like to receive a notification, email me on (alison.dean@adecs.com.au) and I'll contact you directly.
As with all of the offerings, I am available to present this in your school - just get in touch!
In 2022, I was approached by the Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE) at the University of Sydney to write a course in languages methodology for NSW Primary and Secondary teachers of other subject disciplines. The Institute had secured a grant from the NSW Department of Education to address the decline in the number of language teachers by offering practising teachers (proficient in other languages) the opportunity to add approval to teach languages to their Departmental accreditation. The rationale behind the project seemed like such a no-brainer to me: in every school I’ve worked in, I’ve known many of my Business Studies, English, Maths and Geography colleagues to be highly proficient, or indeed bilingual, in other languages. Upon learning that I was a language teacher, many of them would express a deep interest in how languages were taught, always with the rider that they would “love to be able to teach it, they just wouldn’t know how.”
So when this opportunity came along, I jumped at the chance.
Mapped to the AITSL standards, the course comprises of 14 weeks of online modules, followed by a 5-week prac component. For those interested in the content, I’ve written a blog post here.
I ran the first offering of the course in July last year, attended by 30 enthusiastic teachers from a diverse range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Every Tuesday they zoomed in for an hour to discuss the readings and tutorial questions from the week, sharing their experiences and learning from each other. The majority have now met the requirements of the course and have received their accreditation to teach in Department schools.
The level of interest in the course has been wonderful, and I will be taking a further two cohorts through in 2024. Teachers interested in finding out more are encouraged to visit the SICLE website (click through below) for more information.
I was recently engaged by a NSW Catholic Education Diocese to conduct a languages curriculum review of one of its schools. The staff's passion and commitment to language learning came through in spades, and I'm really looking forward to our follow-up 'refine and align' sessions.
If your school is up for NESA registration, or you'd like an objective eye cast over your curriculum documentation, don't hesitate to get in touch.
I am continually inspired by the educators I meet and work hard to deliver relevant, evidence-based professional learning. Click through for testimonials of my recent work.
Elated to announce that I have graduated with First Class Honours in the Graduate Certificate in International Education (IB) from the University of Melbourne. I specialised in curriculum and assessment design for the Languages B course, creating scope & sequence and assessment resources as part of the assignment schedule.
Since finishing the course, I've been focussing my energies on creating curriculum and assessment resources for classes running the IBDP and HSC courses concurrently. Click through for assistance in this area.
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