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.