Excited Parents

You will have to forgive us going on and on about the recent Consult and Collaborate Conference. There was just so much there for parents as well as teachers, and it was good that Speech Pathologists and Guidance officers were also there. We had one very excited parent come rushing up, as she and her son had been wandering down below and saw the conference – and she wanted to see what was there. Very excitedly she had wandered around to all the exhibitors, collecting valuable information for her son and family.

I guess the moral of the story is that if your child has learning delays, keep an eye on conferences for teachers as very often there is valuable information for parents as well. Many of the key speakers have private practices, so there would have been much valuable information for parents as well.

The Launch of In the Garden!

What a fantastic conference we attended on the weekend! The Consult and Collaborate Joint Conference is now over for another year, but what a time we had! As satchel sponsors, we were overwhelmed with the support that we got from conference participants. Mind you, perhaps the free highlighters and traffic lights were also enjoyed by conference participants too!

The launch of the In the Garden Literacy Package was attended by some 75 conference participants, and there was overwhelming support for our new, innovative and Australian Literacy Package.  Thank you to the MANY teachers who visited our stand, and who were generous in their praise for the package itself, but also for what 5energies is trying to do. The conference itself could not have run more smoothly – many of the presentations were very thought-provoking, the discussions and conversations were interesting, and the food was exemplary!

Over the next couple of days, I will be posting some more photos of the conference so you can see how wonderful the conference was. The information about the Conference special, for purchase of the In the Garden series, is now posted in the Resources section of the website as well. Please contact us if you want more information on this wonderful literacy package!

Consult and Collaborate Joint Conference 2009

What an exciting time we are having!  We are in preparation for the Consult and Collaborate Joint Conference 2009 at the Brisbane Conference Centre on the 18th and 19th September and we are almost leaping and squealing with excitement! It is our honour to be satchel sponsors – but what we are exceptionally excited about is the launch of our In the Garden Literacy Package!

Filled with innovative and exciting resources for teachers, this package is not just the culmination of hard work, but an absolute celebration of the value of dedicated and committed professionals collaborating to create a resource of best practice across so many domains. We will be thanking the wonderful people who have collaborated with us – from Sarah Amies (Author and illustrator), Anne-Maree Garcia (Multi-media guru), Patrick Mitchell (narrator and story-teller),  Tina Kriedemann (The Purple Jam Studio / Brisbane), Angie Sublime (Sublime Music Studio/ Brisbane) and Iris Wesling (St. Eugene Catholic College, Burpengary),  these people have given blood, sweat and tears to make this launch on Friday a spectacular success.

The Literacy Package consists of 7 in the Garden student texts, a Big Book, some visual processing Mystery Sheets, a CD of music suitable for assembly items (and tapping into another sensory learning pathway), a DVD of supported reading modes, and a teacher resource book, jam-packed with black-line masters, strategies and activities suitable for develping higher-order thinking. What can I say? We are justifiably proud of it, and hope many of you are able to join us at the launch.

Hopefully we will also see many of you at the conference – we are just so excited about being there and renewing friendships with those who attended the last conference – and meeting new conference participants.

What an exciting time!

What a busy, and exciting time we have been having.

Over the next few days I will be posting some photos of the recording session that Alex and I were involved in on Friday, at good friend Angie’s studio. Tina, another good friend,  (from The Purple Jam Music Studio – link below) was also there – Tina and Angie have written the music and provided the technical support as we develop a package of goodies to go with our ‘in the Garden’ texts which were published last year. This is an exciting time – the package will be launched in mid-September, so keep watching this space! 

The new learning calendar is up as well, with more training going ahead in July, for teachers, teaching assistants and childcare workers. So take a look if you are interested.

www.thepurplejam.musicteaching.info 

Election in Queensland

Election results in Queensland are in, and no doubt there will be some sore heads somewhere, considering the successes and failures of the election process. Regardless of who won or lost, at 5energies, we are hoping that someone in government begins to look locally, asks us for our research supporting children with learning delays, and begins to focus on local efforts to assist these children.

I have been told that the Federal Government is bringing in the Canadian Social Development Index, which gives a good amount of information on each Prep child. However, it still does not assess the underlying factors that impinge upon a child’s ability to learn. THESE are important to us at 5energies and we have the success rate to prove it at the learning consultancy. At the risk of sounding like strong activists, we are sincerely hoping that those within the education department and within government, begin to talk to us about our training programmes for teachers, and how we can genuinely help children with learning delays. We are in four schools now and the results from those schools have been stunning… and all because of the commitment of teachers, their understanding of the factors underpinning learning and their willingness to include more apppropriate strategies in their daily teaching.

In the meantime, congratulations to those members of Parliament who have won the election, and we hope you take your responsibilities to your constituents very seriously, including those children who are experiencing developmental delays and need assistance now. These are the voters of the future…

« Previous Page — Next Page »