Welcome to a new 5energies Team Member!

hi everyone,

One of our team members Anne – Maree, had a baby boy a couple of weeks ago, so we offer congratulations to Anne-Maree, Patrick and their daughter Alannah, on the safe and healthy birth of their ‘little prince’ (who, at 3.6 kg, was a very healthy weight!!). We hope to go and see the new addition to our extended 5energies family sometime this week.  Welcome to the world, little man.

Many of you might not know that Anne-Maree is our technical guru, and has volunteered her services in the development of our promotional DVD, and in a major project that we have underway, to tell the stories of our ‘In the Garden’ series of books. We at 5energies are so exceptionally blessed with the people who assist us in so many ways – and Anne-Maree’s skills are so extensive, and we so appreciate what she does for us. 

we also have so many other team members who assist us, and we would like to thank some of them for their contributions as well. Sarah Amies, our talented author, wrote the ‘In the Garden’ stories, Von edited and desktop published them in preparation for printing and Patrick has kindly volunteered to use his skills as actor and raconteur to tell the stories in a variety of ways. A package, with hard-copy stories, DVD of the story told in several different ways for different levels of learners will also be accompanied by lesson notes for teacher use in the classroom as well as some fabulous songs and music, to go with each of the animals. The very talented Angie and Tina are helping us to get that aspect underway – wait till you see Patrick in action, and the songs created by Angie and Tina!  Graeme, our IT guru, is also hard at work streamlining the FILTA, and getting it to a computerised state of being: wait till you see how easy it is to use then!

So, thank you to everyone who is working so hard on our behalf, and another welcome to the newest 5energies team member!

***  Keep posted for launch date of the In the Garden package! The dates will be on our calendar.

Fantastic Oral Language PD

What a brilliant time we had on Wednesday night! it was a three hour Oral Language workshop, and thanks must go to the teachers involved for giving up their time after hours for professional learning. The photos shows Alexandra sharing ‘critters’ from our box of stuffed animals (frill neck lizard, snake, spiders, etc), in readiness for creating an oral story, and making the leap to writing, and how that oral story changes.

There was lots of laughter, lots of fun, and it was lovely to meet teachers from two more schools. We will be putting up the schedule of workshops for term 4 very shortly so if you are interested in any of these, please check the calendar.

51,360 Children Need Help

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (4221.0 Schools Australia, 2007) results there are some 428074 primary aged students in Queensland. The news reports from yesterday indicated that approximately 12% of those students did not achieve benchmark in literacy and numeracy. While the testing occurs in selected grades, it is safe to assume that in between the testing grades, those students are likely to be experiencing ongoing learning difficulties. To put a face to those students, that 12% who were BELOW the benchmark equates to some 51360 young people who are struggling with their learning.  

Unless there is investigation into why these children are not able to access the curriculum, unless there is some in-depth knowledge about the factors underpinning their learning capabilities, it is going to be difficult for these children to become functionally literate and numerate, even if offered the $750 per student in additional tutoring. It isn’t just five or ten children; it is 51360 children, and their lives being affected… Some of these children will be identified as children with learning disabilities, but the bulk of them are children of normal cognitive and operational function who are trying exceptionally hard to achieve. It seems completely logical to 5energies staff that the focus – politically and educationally - should be to identify these children early, early, early and to do that by screening each child in the key areas underpinning learning from a developmental perspective.  The relatively small amount of money poured into finding out WHY they are unable to access learning in the same way as their peers, and then into intervention programs that actually assist them long -term, seems a good investment in the future of Australia.

How can we help these 51360 children further? Who do we need to contact politically to ensure these children have both advocates and a ‘voice’ in demanding a change of focus, funding and assistance?