Victor

We are expanding!!

Over the past week we welcomed Victor and Louise, speech pathologists, to our team. It was a hectic week, with Victor and Louise thrown into a full schedule of clients – and by all accounts they were exhausted but happy!

Victor is working through the week, while Louise (photo on right) is taking over our Saturday sessions, and will shortly be joined by an Occupational Therapist.

Louise

Alexandra, our resident Speech Pathologist has been enjoying the company of Victor and Louise, and these two talented people have enjoyed their first few days as part of the team.

We were also remiss in not introducing you to Carol, who has started in the front office with Julie. Carol (photo below) and Julie are still the first people to contact, as they are the queens of the diary! Carol is also our resident bookkeeper so is keeping us on the straight and narrow!

Carol

The office will shortly be undergoing some renovations too – we are very excited about that too. We hope there will be a minimum of disruption, but are looking forward to the more usable spaces that are created.

So all in all, a time of excitement for us in 5energies. We are currently looking for another Occupational Therapist and a teacher to join out team too so if you know of anyone who might be interested, please get them to ring the office.

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 

As the presenters, Alex and I find these training sessions so exciting – the potential within their schools to create change is so immense! The exchange of information between professions is also so empowering – each time I listen to Alex, as a very experienced speech pathologist, I learn something new. We also have our first trainer coming online too – this is a person who has been working in the 5energies model for the past two years, and is now embarking on the journey to become a qualified trainer. Now that is exciting too!

We will be putting the new learning calendar up in the next few days, so if you are interested in the next Basic Training sessions, please contact the office for more information.

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.

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.