Welcome to Term 3!

Ahhhh, term 3. I love term 3.

Term 1 is the term where you get to know the children in your class, and see who works well with whom. Term 2 is the term where you really get engaged in good teaching and learning programs – but it has so many holidays to interrupt the schedule. Term 3? Well, by now, most teachers know who is struggling and who is sailing, and the program gets fine-tuned so much more effectively.

This is the term where referrals happen for those children who are struggling. Most schools have a list of screening and testing tools which offer snapshots of information, but many are not for classroom teachers to use: these are the assessments which guidance officers, speech pathologists or occupational therapists use. There really are limited screening tools which offer value for the time investment within a classroom. It has always been the belief of 5energies© that well-informed teachers are effective teachers and we offer a three day-training program which includes use of our teacher–friendly FILTA© (5energies© Integrated Learning Tool of Australia).

What does the FILTA© do? It gives integrated base-line information about a child across ten key learning domains, such as visual and auditory perception, fine and gross motor skills and receptive and expressive language. It also gives direct information to the teacher about areas of delay for each child, and opportunities to build in skill development sessions to engage and assist those children. Our recent cohort studies (screening of 60 new Prep students starting school) at the beginning of Term 1 raised some interesting results, which have allowed the two schools involved to really fine-tune programs and cater for these students.

The learning community is such a unique one. Teachers give so much of themselves, but operating from a position of greater knowledge is very satisfying. 5energies© will be running FILTA© training in the next mid-term break. Please give us a ring for more information and welcome to term 3. May it be a satisfying term for teachers and their students everywhere.

Memories of Childhood

Memories… Can you hear background humming of that song from the musical Cats?

I was visiting a friend yesterday and was watching her grandchild playing quietly on the floor while we had our coffee. The four year old, working intently on a puzzle, had tipped the puzzle pieces out of the puzzle, so they were all upside down. He looked at the pieces for awhile, mulling the problem. He tried different strategies. First he turned them over with his fingers (hand-eye coordination and manipulation skills). He started at the outside, using the smooth shape of the outside border to try to find the right pieces (logic and visual discrimination). He ‘asked’ his grandmother for her help by just looking up at her (non-verbal language) and she immediately leaned over to play with a piece to put it in the right spot to get him started.

They both smiled at each other (love and trust). He then put the pieces where they belonged, actively selecting and matching the colours and shapes this time (visual discrimination). Then, he showed his grandmother the completed puzzle (independence and perseverance) before racing off (as four year olds tend to do) to see what grandpa was doing. What memories will this little boy take away from his day? What skills has he practised? What a wealth of information this young man gave me, as an interested observer of his developmental achievements.

Contrast that with a child who does not have the well-developed manipulation skills to turn the puzzle pieces over, or the logic skills to determine that starting from the outside of the puzzle is a good strategy. This is likely to be a child who loses interest in puzzles very quickly, but also has troubles even putting the darned thing away. Who cares? It is only a puzzle, isn’t it? Well, yes but it is a also a tried and true school activity which encourages visual perception, independence, logic and the ability to take risks when choosing strategies. What memories would a child with delays in these areas take away? What behaviours would this child show, when faced with the same activity? How frustrated would this child be? Imagine a childhood where the overwhelming memories are of frustration, anger or confusion…

Parents have such a wealth of information about their children. It is these simple daily tasks that soon add up to an overall picture of a child’s abilities. Our aim is to create wonderful childhood memories, ones that bring feelings of satisfaction and success. If a parent is concerned about his or her child’s progress, how fortunate that we live in a time where help and advice are available from a general practitioner, occupational therapist, speech pathologist or from 5energies©! What do you think?

Welcome to 5energies!

Oh my goodness, here we go… The first-ever 5energies© blog. So, take a deep breath, slow down, and pick the most important thing to talk about.

Let’s start with children.

In Australia today, there are many children struggling to learn. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2007, there were 1, 969, 303 primary aged children within Australia. At a rough estimate, within each school, there are likely to be a minimum of 15% of children who are struggling to learn. These children may have learning delays in visual or auditory discrimination or processing, for example, or have delayed receptive or expressive language skills. Perhaps their fine motor skills are preventing them from the full range of manipulative skills required for concrete learning in the early stages of schooling.

For whatever reason, that 15% of children with learning challenges translates to an astonishing 295, 395 primary school children across this country who may – or may not – achieve functional literacy and numeracy skills as they struggle to make sense of daily school routines, tasks and ways of operating that their peers take for granted. These children usually have normal cognitive function, so it is not that they don’t WANT to learn – they often have delays in one or more of the ten key domains that underpin learning and learning just does not come together easily for these children.

This is why we love helping these children. We welcome the opportunity to introduce them to the best team in the country, a team that consists of an experienced speech pathologist, occupational therapist, educational psychologist and senior educators. Our mission is to screen them across ten key domains, and find out exactly why they are not learning. We so enjoy seeing the looks of satisfaction on children’s faces when they succeed and develop strategies to help them make sense of their world. We relish the chance to share information with parents in workshops where we explain the activities and model them for parents to use at home. Our vision is to share our approach further, extending the number of schools who have already attended the three-day professional development, and are now working in an integrated 5energies© way.

So welcome to 5energies©. While there is lots of information on the website itself, this blog will be where we can discuss issues of importance as we value the children in our midst, and value the opportunities to create new beginnings, new partnerships and new synergies, as we help our children to learn.