Merry Christmas to all!

Just a very quick comment to wish everyone a very merry and festive Christmas, and a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! This year has certainly flown past, and as with all things, if you are having a lot of fun along the way, the time just flies. That is certainly the case at 5energies, where it has given us such great delight to see children succeeding – and succeeding well!

Our end of year function was a Bocce Tournament, and Graeme, our IT guru and consultant won the overall trophy, but Zachary won the Junior Trophy in a convincing win. Best and Fairest went to Angie and Claire, who showed restraint and enthusiasm throughout the entire highly competitive tournament. Either way, it was a fun afternoon for all of us at 5energies, and our families.

So whatever you are doing on Christmas Day, our hope is that you enjoy your day as well, and reflect on the richness that our children have brought to our lives. Christmas sure would not be the same without them, would it? Again, all the very best in the festive season, and in 2009, from all of us at 5energies.

Onwards to 2009

Onwards to 2009!

How fantastic it is to be working in a school whose teachers are already looking towards 2009. We have been fortunate enough to be working intensively with a school who is determined to make a difference. They have sent five teachers for their basic training, and are sending another four in January. They have implemented a trial program which was highly successful, showing significant improvements for many children in 14 intensive target sessions. They are now looking forward to 2009, and have planned two days in week 9 of this term, to focus on strategic directions and programs for the next school year.

Parents are fortunate in having teachers of this calibre, and I congratulate these teachers for making the efforts that they are, at this stage of the school year. I would love to shout the name of the school from the roof top, but unfortunately there are guidelines which include a lot of red tape with senior hierarchy, before such a thing can happen on a blog. Suffice to say, they and we know who they are – and they are doing such a fantastic job. In this day and age, such dedication and commitment are not praised enough, so I just wanted to let them know that their efforts to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for children ARE appreciated.

The day 5energies created a storm!

What a week this one has been!

On Sunday, 5energies staff and family enjoyed the inaugural Bocce Tournament and Christmas party. Some 27 intrepid souls battled it out for supremacy in a game that many had never played before, but the eventual winners were Graeme Henry (Open Winner), Zachary McGuire (Junior Winner) and Angie Datseres and Claire Culley won ‘Best and Fairest’.

However, as the tournment was coming to an end, the fierce black storm clouds signalled that a storm was on its way, so most families departed to try to get home before the storm hit. Tales have since emerged of where each 5energies person was during the storm, with some driving in the thick of it, and watching trees with roots fly past the bonnet of the car, to others taking shelter in the middle of the house, away from glass and potential flying debris. Unfortunately, Alexandra, Graeme (IT Guru), Patrick (actor / reader of our DVD stories), Anne-Maree (film-maker and Technology Guru) and families saw the big tree in Alexandra’s front yard come crashing down (see photo), pulling the electricity connection right out of the house, taking out the power grid for the street, and keeping them inside the house, without power or telephone, for 48 hours. As baby James, now 9 weeks, was also with them, nappies became an issue. In a wonderful commentary on community spirit, the neighbourhood soon found supplies and fortunately there was sufficient left-over meat and salads from the Bocce Tournament to provide a street gathering and debrief after the storm, on the back verandah. Mel, our Occupational Therapist, ended up driving through the worst of the storm, but her parent’s house in the Gap, one of the worst hit areas of the storm, also received significant damage. Fortunately power has now returned to all residences, and things are returning to normal, albeit with a lot of cleaning up to do.

However, as with any natural disaster, these are just stories. We all survived the big storm (and the two other storms that decided to visit this week), and fortunately all families were fine. However, the inaugural 5energies Bocce Tournament and Christmas party will long be remembered as the day that 5energies created a storm!! May the immensity of the storm reflect where we are next year – huge, determined and getting wide-spread coverage!!

Brilliant Teachers!

We have been fortunate this term in working with one particular school in the region. This is a school with some significant challenges, but one of the school’s advantages is the calibre of the teachers who are implementing a 5energies approach within their Early Childhood section.

Five teachers trained with 5energies and we are now in week 6 of the implementation of the program. These teachers spent the first two weeks of this term screening a significant number of children, so the school had base-line data on the achievements of their students in the ten key learning domains. But here we are, after only fourteen targeted learning sessions, and the difference in the students is electric! Alexandra and I were fortunate enough to observe learning groups in action yesterday, and the difference in each child’s use of metalanguage, and their turn-taking and eye contact, was fantastic! In individual sessions afterwards, teachers were reporting on the transfer of knowledge into the classroom – ‘K’ had begun recounting oral narratives unprompted, ‘S’ understood completely about words, beats / syllables and initial sounds and a small group of children from 5energies groups had shown mastery of rhyming words. This is music to our ears!

Yes, it is early days, but what a privilege to work alongside such talented and enthusiastic teachers, and how gratifying to be helping children to achieve! This is our vision for all children who experience learning difficulties. What a fantastic early Christmas present – to see our 5energies program in action, and being implemented by such intuitive, intelligent and articulate teachers.

Professional and educationally sound

Recently, the concepts of ‘professional’ and ‘educationally sound’ were raised in discussion around the 5energies table. We had heard on the grapevine that 5energies was discussed in a network meeting with particular reference to our professional approach and the educationally sound nature of the program we offer to children and their families. More recently we have begun working with a number of schools, implementing our integrated approach, and allowing teachers to screen children for their learning delays, and to provide targeted and more effective learning programs.

Quite rightly, teachers view themselves as professionals, offering highly competent teaching to a variety of learners, with direct reference to curricula and jurisdictional accountability frameworks. Speech Pathologists and Occupational Therapists also have such frameworks, to satisfy their criteria for professionalism. While we are a private learning consultancy, we too view that we set an amazingly high standard for services to our clients. We demand not only registered and qualified personnel to work for us, but we also demand that they maintain our professional standards of behaviour, support, mentoring, interaction and communication with our clients. We believe in optimising each child’s chances of success, and to do that, parents are an integral part of the learning process.

While we do not necessarily follow any particular jurisdiction in terms of curriculum, we are at all times aware of the contents of curricula around the country, and the need for strong educational programs. Not only are our consultants trained, registered and experienced teachers and professional practitioners, we have in place a stringent training program and ongoing mentoring and support.  More importantly, we view that we are ‘educationally sound’,  in that our program focusses specifically on the acquisition of underpinning learning skills and on the development of functional literacy and numeracy skills, surely a sound approach for any educational program.

However, we genuinetly feel we go past ‘educationally sound’ into the arena of ‘professionally sound’. We don’t ask teachers to do anything in addition to their current hard work – we ask them to work smarter, not harder, and offer programs to enhance existing learning programs. We work from a framework of integration of high standards from the three professions of education, speech pathology and occupational therapy. This is, of course, a very sound way of working.

What are your thoughts about what constitutes ‘professional’ and ‘educationally sound’ practices?

Speech Pathologist urgently required

Hi everyone,

Well, we have finally reached that lovely state of affairs where the learning consultancy requires another speech pathologist to keep up with demand. If any of you know of a registered, qualified speech pathologist who would be happy with part-time sessional work, please ask him or her to contact the 5energies office urgently.

As you know, we run a professional consultancy, one where we offer an integrated and personal service to children with learning delays and their families. We work as a team, with each of the professions of speech pathology, occupational therapy and education contributing equally to offer a holistic approach to resolve learning delays, but also to offer insight to teachers who want to cater more effectively for the individual needs of learners in their classrooms.

What are we after with a new team -member? Someone with qualifications and registration in Speech Pathology, but this person could also be a new graduate looking to fine-tune their practical skills. Someone who loves to work as part of a thriving and busy learning consultancy, in tandem with other highly motivated professionals. Someone who enjoys working with children, and has a calm, unflappable demeanour. Someone with an enjoyment of life, and a sense of humour. If you know of such a person, please ask them to contact us: we would love to train them in January, and have them on the team for the start of the new year.

‘Caring, compassion and humour’ – the 5energies way!

Alex and I have been so fortunate over the past month. During the school term break, we facilitated the training of another five teachers and a speech pathologist who are engaging with our 5energies vision of helping children with learning delays. These astute and intelligent women put in a tiring but highly rewarding three days of basic training, but as with any excellent training, Alex and I also engaged in our own learning journey too, learning as much from the participants as I think they learned from us. These newly trained 5energies people have already returned to their workplaces and the stories that we are already hearing about their successes is phenomenal.

Four of the teachers have engaged immediately in screening in their school, along with a previously trained facilitator, and with a limited amount of assistance from Mel, our talented Occupational Therapist, Alex, our brilliant Speech Pathologist and me, they have successfully discovered the capabilities of some 88 children. We had a planning day today where they are catering intrinisically for the individual needs of these children, and have planned a targeted, focussed program for the majority of these learner, to be implemented over the next term. Congratulations to all of these teachers for their willingness to engage in the process, their high expertise and their sense of humour!

Another facilitator in a different school reported that her school too is doing very well, and providing targeted programs of intervention, and that three words in particular sum up the parent comments about 5energies: caring and compassion with a sense of humour. What a lovely comment to receive.

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?

« Previous Page — Next Page »