JLTAWA

The JLTAWA ‘Top It Up’ PL was recently held at Kolbe Catholic College in Rockingham. There was strong support from not only from Japanese Language Teachers but also teachers of other languages including; Italian, Chinese and Indonesian with fifty eight teachers in attendance, including country and pre-service teachers. This IT focussed PL was aimed at equipping teachers with strategies for the integration of IT in the 21st century classroom.


We were very lucky to have extremely competent local presenters including; Brad Tyrrell, Penelope Coutas, Jaeik Jeong, Sarah Fuller, Kaz Nagatani, Kumiko Sue and Noburo Hagiwara instructing us on how to use iBooks Author, applying TPACK to languages, using iPads and iPods and embedding ICT into language classes. We were very fortunate to have so many varied models of best practise presented in one forum. I am sure that we all left with strategies that we could implement the next day, which is the hallmark of a top class PL. Feedback from teachers that have attended such annual JLTAWA PL sessions in the past has been that they provide valuable opportunities for teachers to network over a delicious lunch, as I am sure was the case this year also.


At the AGM the JLTAWA Language Teacher Award was presented. Nathan Harvey, from Willetton Senior High School was the winner, and a very worthy winner of this award. The JLTAWA committee thank the Japanese Language Teachers that took the time to honour their peers by nominating them for this prestigious award.

  
 

The Japanese Language Speech Festival 2011 was held on Thursday 18 August at the State Library of WA where a record number of over 80 students attended. This showcase event continues to flourish and highlight the wonderful Japanese language learning taking place in our classrooms. Students from 6 schools attended the event in this format for the first time and the technology- assisted categories continue to wow the audience. The interest in ‘cosplay’ continues to grow and there was even an impromptu ‘haruhi’ dance performed in the foyer! It is clearly becoming so much more than just a speech competition. Congratulations to the following prize winners:

The draft paper, Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages, is available for public consultation from 31 January to 7 April 2011.
http://www.acara.edu.au/acara_update_01022011.html#2