16 September

  • For this Week

  • Tier 1 and OPRS Services

  • Learning Diversity PD Opportunities

  • Other PD Opportunities

  • Staff Calendar

Morning everyone, it's a brief one this week. We have a few PD opportunities that might interest you.


For this Week

  • Monday: ESF Health & Safety Audit (AM); these ESF staff might walk around for this purpose.
  • Tuesday: Lunch Staff Meeting @12:10 - follow up on school development discussions (please sit in class teams)
  • Wednesday: Mid-Autumn Festival
  • Friday: Jackie Strang, TCK PYPC (PM)


Tier 1 and OPRS Services

The Tier 1 service was launched in October 2023. To help everyone remember the application procedures and service scope for both Tier 1 and OPRS Services, they will be hosting a briefing session. All Kindergarten teachers and teaching staff are warmly invited to attend. 


Date: 10 Oct (Thur) 2024

Time: 16:15 - 16:45

Language: English

Target: All kindergarten teachers/ teaching personnel under OPRS


Content: 

  • Introduce the Tier 1/ OPRS service
  • Introduce the Child Observation Checklist(COC-15)-screening tool for Kindergarten teachers

English Briefing session registration link 

A meeting link will be sent to you after registration. Grateful for your reply on or before 27 Sept (Fri).

 

If you'd like to familiarise yourself with the basics of the services before the session, please refer to the following On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services (OPRS) Information Sheet.


Learning Diversity PD Opportunities


Unveiling the Unseen: Exploring the unique perspectives of Autistic girls on 24 Oct from 1:00 - 3:30 at ESFC


Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that affects an individual's social communication, interaction skills, and patterns of behaviour and interests. Historically, ASD has been diagnosed more frequently in boys than in girls. However, recent research suggests that the prevalence of ASD in girls may be underestimated.


Girls with ASD often exhibit different behavioural patterns and symptoms compared to boys, which can contribute to underdiagnosis or misdiagnosis. Factors such as social masking, differences in imagination and play skills, special interests, social interactions, sensory sensitivities, anxiety, depression and internalising symptoms can make it more challenging to recognise ASD in the female population.


Understanding these gender-based differences is crucial for improving early identification, providing tailored support, and ensuring equitable access to resources and services for individuals with ASD, regardless of their gender.


Understanding and Implementing Social Thinking on 14 Nov from 8:30 - 4:00 at ESFC


The Social World is vast and filled with countless social landscapes; it becomes increasingly nuanced and complex with age. Individuals are expected to intuitively learn, to varying degrees, about the social world. This super-sensitive detector is important to understand and interpret what others are doing, saying, thinking, planning, and feeling. Minds are designed to actively process social information to figure out how the social world works and how each of us can work better within that world.


Joint attention, knowledge of expectations relating to behaviour, and mental flexibility are all key components for appropriate social relationships. A child or young person who has difficulty with focus, understanding the context of the environment around them, and lacks knowledge of how their behaviours make others feel may experience difficulties with Social Thinking.


As such, students who demonstrate Social Thinking stretches often exhibit challenges across many curriculum areas as academic learning requires a solid understanding of social thinking concepts and ability to apply them. Social-academic connections involve points-of-view, clear expression, context description, emotions, characters and their traits, inference, collaboration, teamwork and critical thinking of relationships. 


Please contact Laura if you are interested in attending any of these PD opportunities. 


Other PD Opportunities

Seeds of Leadership (for teachers), October 2024 to June 2025, online through ESF

Gateway Programme ID: ESFC024153

Please reach out to Brenda if you are interested in applying. The deadline is 27 Sept 2024.


Future of Learning conference, 8-9 Nov (can attend 1 or both days), free, @ Chinese International School

(previously named ADE conference - Apple Distinguished Educators)

The event aims to unite a community of forward-thinking educators to share ideas, collaborate, and discover innovative methods for authentic learning.


Upcoming Dates

Please check our internal calendar below. We might forget to remind everyone of odd dates. We will continue to add events to the calendar as soon as it's confirmed. Here's the full 2024/25 Calendar. 


Thank you!