Leadership in EAL

The 2016-2017 school year brought with it a new and exciting opportunity for me to grow as an educator. I have the opportunity to develop my leadership skills as the EAL coordinator at Suzhou Singapore International School.  My job has involved leading and supporting the EAL department, leading staff meetings, parent sessions and PD for staff. Assessing new students and working with teachers in a support role to ensure that students are progressing and are in the correct EAL phase.


2016 was a good year for Leadership workshop opportunities at SSIS.

The first weekend workshop was the ACAMIS Leadership Training. Leading Collaborative Teams with Micheal Iannini. We learned a lot of  useful, hands on leadership strategies and ideas including new Ice breakers, creating Norms,  using protocols, and having difficult conversations.

The second workshop was a 2 day IB workshop. Pedagological Leadership (PYP Category 2) workshop. We learned even more about the changing role of leadership and were able to apply much of the learning to our school context.

Making the PYP Happen Workshop

I also took part in a 2nd 'Making the PYP happen' workshop in October 2015.  This one was run by Yoon-Ah Lee and Jay Brownrigg. I don't know where I have put the certificate though.

Learning about Materials and Their Properties in the Makerspace

This year the Grade 1 team has the luxury of an empty room in their corridor. We created a "Makerspace" in this room!

During the G1 unit How the word works:

Central Idea: Materials are chosen for different purposes based on their properties and people’s needs

Students worked in the makerspace to create their own informational text at the end of the unit. They chose and attached different materials to their book and wrote all they could about the properties of that material.  The students were really engaged and their learning was very evident. If I were to do this activity again, I would create book pages that had a line for the title at the top of the page (where they would write the material) then an empty box for them to attach the material. Underneath I would have distinct 2 sections. 1 that said 'properties' and one that said 'uses.'