In today's episode, we’re here to help you feel more confident and prepared for your teaching placements. From packing your teacher-bag to managing lesson timing and taking care of your voice, we’ll share practical tips that make a big difference. Whether you are heading out on your first or final placement, this episode episode is packed with essentials to guide you through.

Helpful Links 💡

Voice Care for Teachers

Protecting Your Teacher Voice

Be sure to send this to someone you know who might be preparing for their placement. Remember to follow, rate, and leave a review!

Imagine this. You have spent all weekend writing detailed feedback comments all over your students' assessment tasks, only to have them look at their score and throw the rest of the paper away. Sound painful? Join us today as we explore the powerful impact feedback can have in your classroom and how you can make feedback more effective for you and your students without adding to your workload. This episode is full of practical strategies for engaging your students in the feedback process because feedback should be more effort for them than it is for you!

Helpful Links 💡

NSW Education: Feedback Practices and Strategies

AITSL Spotlight: Feedback

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APSTs:

Focus Area 5.2 - Provide feedback to students on their learning.

Welcome to the very first of our Recess Digest episodes, where we aim to bring you quick ideas and helpful insights in the time it would take for you to eat your recess! Today we dive into two "Habits of Mind" that are essential for both students and teachers: persisting and managing impulsivity. These are skills that not only help in academic success but also support emotional intelligence and long-term resilience. We'll share some practical tips and strategies that you can easily implement in your classroom to help your students develop these habits and grow as life-long learners.

Helpful Links 💡

⁠Habits of Mind Institute⁠

⁠Habits of Mind Explanations for Teachers ⁠

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow, rate, and share it with your fellow educators! Stay tuned for more "Recess Digest" episodes to come.

The 3 R's - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic - are probably more commonly referred to these days as literacy & numeracy. We know, as teachers, that these facets of learning are essential and need to be integrated across all curriculum areas, but that is easier said than done!

The release of the National NAPLAN results last week sparked a great deal of conversation in the media around the state of literacy in Australia. While we aren't here today to unpack all of the issues and hype around these results, we do want to share some practical strategies that can be implemented across all subjects to help strengthen student writing. Whether you’re an English teacher or not, this episode will help you to discover how we can all play a part in bringing back the forgotten 'R!'

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APSTs

Focus Area 2.1 - Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

Focus Area 2.5 - Literacy and numeracy strategies

Focus Area 3.3 - Use teaching strategies

Helpful Links

• ⁠Effective Writing Strategies for Targeting Learner Needs⁠
• ⁠NESA Report: Teaching Writing - Thematic Review⁠
• ⁠Summary Report of the Australian Writing Survey 2018⁠
• ⁠The Writing Revolution⁠

Most of us would agree that creative thinking is important for our students to develop, but cultivating it and teaching students how to 'think creatively' is not an easy task. Join us today as we unpack some of the latest PISA results assessing creative thinking across the globe and explore some frameworks and structures that you can use in order to better cultivate creative thinking in your students (and maybe even in yourself)!

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APSTs

Focus Area 2.1 - Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

Focus Area 3.3 - Use teaching strategies

Helpful Links 💡

PISA - Creative Thinking

PISA Creative Thinking Framework

ACER Creative Thinking Skill Development Framework

ACARA Critical and Creative Thinking Learning Continuum

The height of the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging time for everyone, and an especially unprecedented time for the education sector. If you think you still see and feel the lingering effects of COVID lockdowns ('long-covid' if you will), you are not alone! Join us today for an affirming conversation about the impact of extended periods of online learning on both teachers and students and some possible considerations for how we can respond to and continue to manage the rollercoaster ride that was and is COVID-19.

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APSTs

Focus Area 7.4 - Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities

Helpful Links 💡

Under pressure and overlooked: the impact of COVID-19 on teachers in NSW public schools

The Impact of School Closures on Learning and Mental Health of Children: Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Being a teacher means being loads of different things; an educator, an entertainer, a mediator, an event planner, a cheerleader, a detective...the list goes on.

A skilled interpreter of legislation is one thing that most of us aren't, (unless you've had a super interesting career change), and is the reason why the NCCD is actually super important and very beneficial. Join us today as we unpack what the NCCD is, why you need to know about it as a teacher, and how you can be prepared for the role that you play in the process.

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APTSs

Focus Area - 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs

Focus Area 7.2 - Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements

Helpful Links 💡

NCCD Homepage

NCCD PD for Educational Leaders

NCCD PD for Primary Schools

NCCD PD for Secondary Schools

It would be a terrifying thing to have to count up the number of tears cried, doors slammed, voices raised and detentions served over homework. Most of us know that it holds some value, so why does it cause so much pain and frustration?

Grab your favourite cup of tea and tune in as we unpack some of the flaws with typical approaches to homework and share strategies that you can implement to make it more meaningful and less burdensome for everyone involved!

Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant APTS

Focus Area 3.7 - Engage parents / carers in the educative process

Focus Area 7.3 - Engage with the parents/carers

Helpful Links 💡

Does Homework Still Have Value? - A Johns Hopkins Education Expert Weighs In

Research analysis: Getting the most out of homework

Homework: The Upsides and Downsides

Rethinking Homework - Cathy Vatterott

Join us today for Part 2 of our discussion about the GTPA. This episode, we unpack Practice 3, 4 & 5, as we share some examples of layout, evidence and of course some laughter along the way!

Join us today as we shine a light on the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA) both for pre-service teachers undertaking it, and for teachers who might be supporting pre-service teachers through this daunting process. This is Part 1 of a two-part series where we chat about some of our GTPA experience and top tips, as well as giving you an overview of the GTPA as a whole. In this episode, we also unpack Practice 1 & 2, giving you some examples of types of evidence that you can include in these sections and how you might go about writing your report to show those markers that you are classroom-ready!

Helpful Links 💡

GTPA Website