AustralianTeachers
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Strategies for dealing with ADHD
www.abc.net.au How are our schools managing the rise in ADHD cases? - ABC Radio NationalThe last few years have seen an explosion in the number of people being diagnosed with ADHD, are our schools coping?
Do you have students with ADHD in your class? What sort of strategies do you have for dealing with this, to help the students manage this condition and achieve the desired learning outcomes?
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Open plan classrooms: helpful or harmful to learning?
theconversation.com Open-plan classrooms are trendy but there is little evidence to show they help students learnOpen-plan classrooms can be very noisy. And this is bad for all students, especially those with hearing or learning difficulties.
As part of the push towards "21st century learning", it seems that "open plan classrooms" aka "flexible learning spaces" are becoming more common.
Do you have these sorts of learning spaces at your school? Do you think they are a good thing, providing more options for different types of learning activities, or are the noise levels and distractions hindering learning more than they help it? Do you find that flexible learning space have any impact the way you teach (for better or for worse)?
Interested to hear your thoughts/experiences.
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Proposed Reforms to Initial Teacher Education in Australia
www.abc.net.au Universities will have to improve their teaching degrees or face consequences. The reactions have been mixedUniversities will be given two years to overhaul their education degrees or risk losing their accreditation as part of a national bid to fix Australia's teacher shortage.
What do you think about the proposed changes to teacher education courses at Australian universities? Do you think this shift in emphasis towards direct explicit instruction and classroom managment is the answer to Australia's teacher shortage?
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Introduction of Auslan to the NSW syllabus
www.abc.net.au Teaching Auslan must involve conversations about access and inclusion - ABC EducationWhen taught respectfully, Auslan becomes a celebration Deaf culture and identity.
This year Auslan (Australian Sign Language) was added to the NSW syllabus. Has anyone here started running an Auslan course at their school? I'd love to hear about your experiences.
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Falling school attendance this year?
www.smh.com.au School’s out forever? Risk attendance will never bounce back: education chiefThe decisions made during the pandemic must be reviewed because they are still affecting the mental health of students, a school chief says.
Have you noticed a drop in attendance this year, compared to previous years?
The article acknowledges that one reason students are absent is due to influenza and COVID throughout the community. I also wonder if some of it may be explained by parents pulling students out of school to go on overseas hollidays that were postponed during the COVID lockdowns.
Do you think the drop in attendance is just temporary, or is indicative of something deeper and longer lasting?
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Podcast recommendations?
Do you have any favourite teaching-related podcasts you listen to (especially ones related to teaching in Australia)? One podcast I enjoy is Ollie Lovell's Education Research Reading Room podcast: https://www.ollielovell.com/errr/
Let's build a list of podcast recommendations in the comments below.
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Bulding Thinking Classrooms
Has anyone here looked at Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms? Part of this is to get students up on their feet workinbg in small groups in front of Vertical Non-Permanent Writing Surfaces (aka whiteboards). It seems to me this could be something of a challenge in a traditional-sized classroom with 25-30 students, even if there are some whiteboards available around the sides of the room. I'm keen to hear of any experiences people have had -- what worked well, and what were some of the challenges with this approach to learning?
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How to deal with vandalism in schools?
www.smh.com.au Students were kept back at lunch. Parents said it was akin to a prison campSchool leaders are grappling with a new landscape in which parents vent their frustration on social media and staff feel personally attacked.
Vandalism is an ongoing problem in many schools. One school in the linked article came under fire from parents for implementing a lunchtime detention, where it was likened to a "prison camp". Something of a hysterical reaction, but if not that, then what is the answer?
Do you have a vandalism problem in your school? What sort of approaches can we take to combat this problem?
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More permanent staff roles in NSW schools?
www.theeducatoronline.com NSW schools about to get more permanent staff rolesMore than 1,400 teachers and support staff across NSW could receive job certainty by mid-July
The recently elected NSW government has undertaken to address the shortage of teachers in NSW, and one of the initiatives was to increase the number of permanent positions available. Has anyone noticed any changes as a result of this initiative?
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Weekly Wins!
Comment here about any of those magic moments in the classroom that remind us why we do what we do!
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Welcome to Australian Teachers!
Here is a place in the Fediverse where Australian teachers can gather and build a new community like the one we left behind on the r/AustralianTeachers subreddit. That community provided a lot of useful information for prospective, pre-service and in-service teachers alike, so let's work to make this community a helpful source of information, advice and support.
