2020 SASTA Early Career Teachers Conference

9:00 AM

1 Hour

SCINEMA is the largest science film festival in the Southern Hemisphere and the largest single event of National Science Week. In 2019, 1388 screenings were held to an overall audience of more than 100,000. In this workshop, you will learn effective ways to engage students in STEM using SCINEMA films and educational resources which are all mapped to the Australian National Curriculum. The use of these films in classrooms will raise awareness of STEM careers and disciplines and the impact of scientific understanding on society, which is proven to increase motivation for STEM learning.

Presenter: Jennifer Chalmers

Organisation: The Royal Institution of Australia

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

9:00 AM

1 Hour

Co-presented with Lara Lang, Reynella East College. Don’t we all want our students to be engaged, curious and creative? Research tells us that there is a strong link between questioning and innovation, but how well do we teach questioning in schools? How many questions come from your students in class? How many answers do you expect from students? In this workshop, 10 strategies to promote questioning and critical thinking will be actively presented. Experience how these strategies help to develop the questioning mind and leave with a ‘toolkit’ to help you implement these ideas in your own classroom.

Presenter: Catherine O'Halloran

Organisation: Cabra Dominican College

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers

9:00 AM

1 Hour

How can one material extracted from seaweed be used in increasing number of areas, such as in ice cream, cosmetics, shower bombs, fabric dyes, wound dressings and drug delivery systems? How can we use real-world contexts to help students link concepts and see that building on a connected body of knowledge, collaboration and creativity can lead to countless new opportunities and discoveries? In this workshop, participants will explore various strategies that can be used to help unpack SHE key concepts in middle school and SACE. I will share the hooks I have used to spark student interest, as well as task sheets, enabling prompts and other resources I have developed and delivered to students in middle school and students studying SACE.

Presenter: Joanna Princi

Organisation: Blackwood High School

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

10:30 AM

1 Hour

In this workshop participants will practice creating STEAM units that can be taught in split year classrooms. They will receive example units and explore the Australian Curriculum to find great starting points for units. They will also look at integration with other areas of the curriculum to ensure they are hitting literacy and numeracy outcomes. Participants will also look at how natural elements can be used as resources to make the best of their school setting.

Presenter: Kathleen Best

Organisation: Clarendon Primary School

Target Audience: Primary school teachers

10:30 AM

1 Hour

How can we encourage student choice and embrace students passion in our teaching? In this workshop you will learn how to interpret the curriculum to promote experiential learning and the development of life skills, creating engaging lessons for a broad range of students. Information regarding grant opportunities and other partnerships currently offered to schools within the state will be provided. You will be shown ways that you can make it work at your school, both practically and financially. Together, we will explore possibilities to capitalise on you, and your students, own interests and experiences and begin creating a unit of work which maximises engagement of your students by accessing personal passions.

Presenter: Clinton Alleway

Organisation: Cabra Dominican College

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers

10:30 AM

1 Hour

NEC provides a range of resources including live animal loans, preserved specimens and educational kits for use in your classroom. We do presentations in your school or you can bring your students to us. In this workshop you find out more about what we can offer, will meet some our animals and have the opportunity to explore the use of a selection of our kits.

Presenter: Alex Carr and David LeCornu

Organisation: Nature Education Centre

10:30 AM

1 Hour

Concept mapping is a proven technique of visually illustrating relationships between information and concepts which help students (and teachers) organise and structure their thoughts. This session will focus on the principles of concept mapping and how its techniques can be expanded for student essay construction, media presentations, revision, evaluation tool and preparing units for teaching. Effective software and their use will be demonstrated for rapid deployment within the classroom.

Presenter: Paul Gavini

Organisation: Underdale High School

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

11:45 AM

1 Hour

How do you know if your students are 'getting it'? In this session, we will explore a variety of assessment tools which can quickly gather data and inform your next steps. Formative assessment is key in STEM as it allows teachers to guide and facilitate learning when needed as well checking whether students are grasping the key concepts needed to engage with learning tasks. Collecting this data can sometimes be time-consuming and confusing, but how can we do it better? Please bring an internet-enabled device (laptop or smartphone).

Presenter: Pete Beveridge

Organisation: Pennington School R-7

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers

11:45 AM

1 Hour

Teaching is a dynamic and challenging profession. Teachers have a professional obligation to develop and maintain professional relationships with a diverse range of learners, communicate with parents, act ethically, promote positive values and maintain and raise professional standards. Moving to (full) registration is a continuum of professional growth for a teacher as they transition from the Graduate level of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers to the Proficient career stage. During this session you will learn about the process to transition to (full) registration, gathering evidence and the role of the evaluator. At lunch time you will have the opportunity to meet with Project Officers from the TRB SA in the registration area to answer any questions that you may have about the process.

Presenter: Teacher Registration Project Officers.

Organisation: Teacher Registration Board

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

11:45 AM

1 Hour

Education specialist, Jennifer Chalmers, will show you how to engage and motivate students by using Science as a Human Endeavour outcomes. This workshop will demonstrate how to use current scientific research and discoveries from across Australia to show students the opportunities in Science available to them. Through the use of films, live-streaming, and scientific media, you will find out how to make the science curriculum relevant to students today and allow them to discover the importance of STEM now and going forward in Australia.

Presenter: Jennifer Chalmers

Organisation: The Royal Institution of Australia

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

11:45 AM

1 Hour

A look at how we teach the concepts of gravity through practical investigations and how using the International Space Station is revolutionising research into the medical and manufacturing field. These experiments are designed to remove the misconceptions

Presenter: Mike Roach

Organisation: Hamilton Secondary College-Space School

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

1:30 PM

1 Hour

Abby MacPherson from Burnside PS and prior ‘Credit Union Science teacher of the year’ teams up with Sarah Finney 2019 Prime Minister’s award winner to showcase science inquiry opportunities and learning experiences for primary school students.

Presenter: Sarah Finney

Organisation: Stirling East PS

Target Audience: Primary school teachers

1:30 PM

1 Hour

"The Australian Curriculum: Science emphasises inquiry-based teaching and learning. Scientific inquiry promotes critical and creative thinking by encouraging flexibility and open-mindedness as students speculate about their observations of the world. In an inquiry classroom, students are able to challenge themselves to identify questions and draw evidence-based conclusions using scientific methods. In this workshop teachers will investigate the process and practicalities of inquiry learning in the Science classroom. They will engage in hands-on activities that will inform their understanding of the types of inquiry and how to implement them in their teaching program."

Presenter: Kate Dilger

Organisation: SOUTH AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION [SASTA]

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers

1:30 PM

1 Hour

In this session you will be taken through an integrated maths/science unit on space travel and tiny homes. You will also be shown how online rubrics are used to provide students with feedback, both formatively and summatively. This session is catered for middle school teachers.

Presenter: Izzy Blaess, Charlotte Sharrad, Zac Marshall and Danika Miller

Organisation: Reynella East College

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers

1:30 PM

1 Hour

Flipped learning is a teaching methodology that gives teacher time back to students by covering theory in their students' personal time. Class time is then spent working with their learning in new and exciting ways. In this presentation I'll go through why I flip, how I flip, the technology I use, and how to flip assessment and feedback. We will also get started on your first flip, if you bring your laptop/device.

Presenter: Tobias Ward

Organisation: Brighton Secondary School

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

2:45 PM

1 Hour

Inquiry based learning helps students make their own connections to what they learn. Their own level of curiosity helps them to engage and gain a deeper understanding instead of recalling rules and memorising facts. This session provides strategies to help develop student interest and understanding and offer frameworks which can be used to empower teachers to “give inquiry a go” using the science curriculum as the vehicle for learning.

Presenter: Jade Tinney

Organisation: Salisbury Park Primary

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Primary school teachers

2:45 PM

1 Hour

The SA Department for Education has value added to the Australian Curriculum: Science scope and sequence and has written curriculum units with SA teachers for Years 5 to 9 - This workshop will be for year 7, 8 and 9 teachers.

Organisation: Department for Education

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers

2:45 PM

1 Hour

The workshop is specifically aimed towards new teachers in Secondary or R-12 schools, but will be of benefit to others wanting to obtain a better insight into making the most of a vital resource - your Laboratory Manager/Technician/Assistant, to enhance your teaching in Science and keep the science in your STEM investigations. We aim to highlight the value of collaboration with your laboratory staff to obtain the best from the expertise and resources we are able to provide, gained through personal experience, (some have previous experience working in a range of science based fields), and through collaboration with other colleagues. There will also be a focus on WHS requirements in the school science practical setting, highlighting RiskAssess as one of the platforms for risk assessment and organisation of practical work. Presented by three Laboratory Managers covering the DfE, Catholic and Lutheran sectors, with a combined experience of over 70 years in School Laboratory support.

Presenter: Jane Hosking, Rianne Wright, and Ana Marques-Britto

Organisation: Laboratory Managers Association of SA

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers

2:45 PM

1 Hour

There are many ways to teach the same thing, and sometimes you just need a little inspiration. These 25 tips and tools give you teaching strategies, resources, assessment tips and literacy supports to make your science teaching more varied and effective. Grab a whole toolkit of ideas to use in your classroom for when you want to improve literacy in your class, teach without another worksheet, authentically include student voice, get more student participation, include more inquiry, or make it to the front page of the newspaper!

Presenter: Lara Lang

Organisation: Reynella East College

Target Audience: Middle school (yr. 6-9) teachers, Senior school (yr. 10-12) teachers