Wellbeing & Diversity
Learning Support at Galilee
As we come to the end of another year of fabulous learning at Galilee, I would like to acknowledge and thank our wonderful support staff for their commitment, dedication, flexibility and effort over the busy months of 2019. At Galilee, our aim is to develop the whole of each child and we have seen some wonderful growth in the academic, social, physical and personal capabilities of each of our children. This year, our support staff has comprised:
Occupational Therapist: Tanya Borg, whom we very sadly farewell this week as she relocates to a full-time position closer to home;
Speech Pathologists: Martina and Helen, who are also leaving Galilee at the end of 2019, but who have worked tirelessly to ensure we are off to a great start in 2020;
Learning Support Officers: Sharon, Annmaree, Rosa, Pauline, Maree, Sandra and Dorothy, who have implemented a variety of very successful interventions throughout the year and who support children in the classroom and on the yard throughout each day. With sadness, we farewell and thank Sandra and Maree for their tireless efforts and wish them well in their future endeavours. We also thank Dorothy for working with us this term and look forward to working with her as a teacher in 2020.
We will welcome our new support staff for 2020 in our first newsletter next year.
Below is a summary of some of the interventions we have implemented in 2019. We look forward to supporting the needs of all our children in 2020! Wishing all our families a safe and restful holiday and a very happy Christmas and New Year. For more information about education support, please contact me at jferris@gsm.vic.edu.au.
Peaceful Kids Program
In third term this year at Galilee, we introduced the Peaceful Kids program to replace our Social Skills program. The aims of these programs have been to:
build emotional resilience
empower children to self-manage their anxiety
teach children Mindfulness exercises they can use for life
teach children to use a range of effective coping strategies
teach children to self calm
develop emotional intelligence skills.
Peaceful Kids is a 5-8 week program for groups of 4 to 6 children, with sessions running for approximately one hour each week. We will continue to run the sessions in 2020. Children can be nominated by their parent/carer or teacher and consent is required from their parent/carer.
Some Feedback from the kids:
How have the Peaceful Kids sessions helped you?
“It has given me new strategies and ways to be calm and stay peaceful. It is always something I look forward to on Mondays”
“It has helped me a lot, it helps me not stress or worry”
“By teaching strategies to cope”
“Fun with my friends”
Occupational Therapy
This year Occupational Therapy at Galilee has consisted of two types of service delivery, direct and consultative. Across Prep to Year 6, I have worked either one to one with students or in a small group, on building fine motor and visual motor skills, to support the development of handwriting and using scissors. Within the consultative model, I worked closely with teachers who identified the need for additional support within their classroom and after observation, provided evidence based strategies to enhance occupational performance academically and socially.
Throughout the year, various resources have been purchased to enhance occupational productivity in the classroom. The resources include; slant boards, easy grip scissors, hooki stools, pencil grips and coloured dotted thirds, to name a few.
The Zones of Regulation has been implemented across Year 3-6 to support students with regulating their behaviour.
All year Prep students have participated in a 5 week social skills program based on the widely acclaimed, ‘We Thinkers’ series. The topics discussed were; Body in the group, size of the problem, expected and unexpected behaviour, the group plan and thinking with your eyes.
The Year 5 cohort have enjoyed participating in weekly Bluearth activities to develop learning dispositions such as risk taking, collaboration and problem solving skills.
I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Learning Diversity team at Galilee and wish the staff and students of 2020 a successful year.
Speech Therapy
There has been lots of positive change in enhancing students’ academic and functional communication performance using speech pathology intervention this year at Galilee PS. Galilee has appreciated the work of our staff speech pathologists providing assessments and creating intervention programs delivered by the LSO staff.
Some of the areas targeted through tailored 1:1 programs include:
- correcting articulation errors such as lisping
- literacy intervention such as phonological awareness and phonics
- language such as correcting grammatical errors
The LSO staff and speech pathologists employ a range of techniques to make the therapy fun and engaging such as card games, chalk drawing and board games.
Here are some photos and insights into the students' experiences of the speech pathology program:
"Speech helps you get extra learning and play games while you're learning. It's also helped me with my language." Jensen Andrich, 2C
"I've learnt to say new words with the 's' sound and then play fun games." Jaxon Munda Prep E
We have seen many students master their new skills and discharged from the sessions, or move on to new goals with more confidence, value and insight into their learning. We are excited that speech intervention is continuing into 2020 and anticipate another successful year.
