Page 41 - Languages Victoria December 2019

Languages Victoria
• It was a great experience to learn a bit and give it a go straight away in a real setting. Then reflect on what worked and things that could be improved;
• The workshop showcased how to engage with students and I learnt that I need to speak less and let students speak more;
•I most enjoyed learning different languages from both teachers and students;
• I most enjoyed observing the presenter’s style of teaching;
• I enjoyed the practical side of the activities and being able to test them on students. Interacting with secondary teachers, networking and sharing knowledge with colleagues. The pace was perfect as there was enough
time to learn, consolidate and interact with peers.
Host School Perspective:
Mount Ridley College is a P-12 government school in Craigieburn, with an enrolment of close to 2500 students. Students from a non-English speaking background represent 66% of the student population. Italian and Japanese are the languages offered from P-12, with study compulsory until the end of Year 9.
In recent years, our challenge has been retaining students beyond compulsory languages education. This year, our languages team has been engaging in an ongoing professional dialogue regarding how to build a curriculum that is both engaging and academically rigorous in the context of 1-2 contact hours per week from P-10. When the opportunity arose to work with the MLTAV and Linton Roe on this professional learning workshop, the timing could not have been more perfect. We were able to release three staff to attend the workshop and engage two of our languages classes (Years 3/4 Italian and Year 7 Japanese) to participate and provide feedback to teachers in a practical teaching setting. The feedback from our students was overwhelmingly positive and they consistently stated that they enjoyed how active and hands-on the oral language activities were.
As teachers who have worked with these students all year, we noticed immediate, positive impacts of these activities. We were excited to see students who tend to be passive in our classes really participating and willing to take risks by sharing oral language. We also found that students loved the opportunity to share their own languages, and the value they felt from teachers taking an interest in their personal background cannot be underestimated (AITSL standard 1 – know your students). Since participating in the workshop, our students have continued to ask us to do the activities again and we have used it as a platform to receive genuine feedback from our students about how we are going as teachers. The smiles on students’ faces upon saying ‘morena’ (te reo Maori for ‘good morning’) every lesson
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