Events

This presentation will provide participants with a practical introduction to AI, focusing on both text-based tools and image generation. After a brief overview of what AI is and how it's being used in teaching, we’ll dive into actionable ways the audience can utilise AI to in their day-to-day work, followed by creative applications of AI-generated imagery to enhance engagement with visual content. By the end, attendees will leave with a solid understanding of AI tools and practical strategies they can implement immediately to improve efficiency and creativity in their work. ** This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Tuesday 25th February 2025 Time: 12 pm - 1:00 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost: LDA Member: $40 LDA Student Member: $30 Non-Member: $60 Bookings The live course has concluded but the recording is available on our on-demand learning shop. About Chantelle Elbadaoui Chantelle is the Founder of Attain Education, specialising in online tutoring for primary-aged children. She is an experienced teacher and mentor with 14 years of experience in primary education across Australia and UK. She has previously presented on how modern teaching benefits from technology, including AI. She has also appeared as a guest on Podcasts such as Classroom to Tutor and Alpha Bites.

This course will be based on Scarborough's Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001) and include presentations on supporting both primary and secondary students to become skilled readers, focusing on both word recognition and reading comprehension. This course will be run over four sessions on the following dates: Tuesday 4th March 12pm - 2pm AEDT (Melbourne time) Tuesday 11th March 12pm - 2pm AEDT Tuesday 18th March 12pm - 2pm AEDT Tuesday 25th March 12pm - 2pm AEDT ** Recordings will be available for one month after the event ** Cost: LDA Member: $300 LDA Student Member - $245 Non-Member - $390 Bookings The live course has concluded but the recording is available on our on-demand learning shop. Presentations Evidence-based foundations of the science of reading - Dr Jennifer Buckingham The theories and research that underpin the evidence base known as the science of reading have been tested and validated in numerous studies over many decades. In this opening presentation, Jennifer will provide an overview of the fundamental theoretical frameworks for the components and development of reading to set the scene for the subsequent presentations that connect them to evidence-based practice. Mastering Decoding and Word Recognition Skills - Lisa Bellman Ansell & Sarah Collins Evidence-based reading instruction using decodable text is explicit and engaging, building students decoding, reading fluency and comprehension skills. As part of our exploration into decoding, we will look at the process of how we learn to read, what makes a good reader, how to choose the right decodable books for your students and how to plan an effective small group reading session. Reducing the reading gap in a secondary setting - Stasha Demosthenous & Christine D'Arcy A multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to improve reading comprehension in a secondary setting will be outlined in a session that will be relevant for upper primary and secondary school leaders and teachers. Participants will learn how teachers and leaders across all year levels and learning areas at Parafield Gardens High School have been implementing and measuring the impact of a Tier 1 explicit vocabulary instructional routine (VIR) that incorporates a focus on subject-specific word morphology before taking a deep dive into the school’s Tier 2/3 Reading Acceleration Program (RAP) for Year 7 and 8 students with word reading (decoding) ages at or below 10 years. Participants will be shown lots of examples of what reading intervention in a secondary setting can look like and the positive outcomes that can be achieved for older struggling readers Supporting struggling older readers with multicomponent literacy interventions - Melinda de Haan Multicomponent literacy interventions aim to bridge the knowledge gap between students with reading difficulties and their peers, empowering students to engage in their classroom work. This presentation will explore how to plan multicomponent literacy interventions for older struggling readers (upper primary and secondary). Assessing Reading Progress: Standardised, Diagnostic, and Formative Tools for Success - Jacinta Conway This session will explore how reading assessments can be effectively integrated within a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) framework to enhance literacy outcomes. Participants will learn how assessments function across all tiers of instruction, from universal screeners that identify students at risk, to standardised and diagnostic tools that guide targeted interventions for Tier 2 and Tier 3 students. The session will also address the role of formative assessments in monitoring progress and shaping classroom instruction in Tier 1 settings. The presentation will highlight practical resources, including free assessment tools for decoding skills, alongside formal assessments like the WIAT. Guidance will be provided on how schools can create an effective assessment schedule that aligns with literacy goals and supports data-driven decision-making. Real-world case studies will demonstrate how to interpret and apply assessment data to inform teaching, design interventions, and track student growth. Attendees will leave equipped with actionable strategies to implement robust reading assessment practices within their schools, ultimately supporting the development of skilled and confident readers. Language Comprehension: A pathway to proficient reading - Nancy Hennessy The Reading Rope, a visual metaphor for skilled reading, provides an explanation of the complexity and interwoven nature of reading acquisition. It offers a powerful picture of the two major parts of the rope, word recognition and language comprehension. We know that “skilled reading requires the fluent execution & coordination of word recognition & text comprehension (Scarborough, 2002).” The science is clear- language comprehension is foundational to constructing meaning of text. This session will focus on the upper strands of the reading rope including vocabulary, language structures, text & background knowledge as well as inference. The informed educator understands the nature of each, their individual, as well as collective, contributions, to reading comprehension. But, most importantly, they recognize the implications & connections to the design & delivery of effective comprehension instruction. From listening to understanding: The keys to comprehending language - Laura Glisson In this session, Laura will present on evidence-based and evidence-informed oral language instruction to support the development of reading. With a particular focus on vocabulary, background knowledge and sentence comprehension, Laura will bring a range of practical strategies for immediate implementation in the classroom that will support all learners, including those with language disorder. Speakers Dr Jennifer Buckingham Dr Jennifer Buckingham OAM is the Executive Director of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) in the NSW Department of Education. Prior to that, she was Director of Strategy and Senior Research Fellow at MultiLit, and Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. Jennifer was the founder of the Five from Five project. She is co-editor and co-author of the textbook Effective Instruction in Reading and Spelling (MRU Press, 2023) which is used in teacher education courses in universities in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland, and An investigation of literacy instruction and policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Churchill Trust Australia, 2024). Jennifer is a board member of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at La Trobe University. Lisa Bellman Ansell Lisa is a teacher, reading intervention specialist and national trainer for the...

In this webinar, Andy will provide a comprehensive overview of ADHD and the often unexplored related behaviours in children, including how it may present differently in girls. He’ll present a broad selection of insights, practical tips and strategies for teachers and any professionals who regularly work with and support children. **This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Monday 10th March 2025 Time: 7:30 pm - 9 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost: Member: $40 Student Member: $30 Non Member: $60 Bookings The live course has concluded but the recording is available on our on-demand learning shop. About Andrew Hayes Andy Hayes brings a unique skill set and lived experience to his role as an ADHD coach, backed by a Master of Education from the University of Notre Dame and a Graduate Certificate in Instructional Leadership from the University of Melbourne. A qualified teacher and accredited ADHD coach from ADDCA in New York, Andy is also a former Director of Teaching and Learning at an all-boys private school in Perth. In addition to coaching children and adults, he also works with teachers and schools and is a sought-after presenter on ADHD.

The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT III) is the most reliable and comprehensive assessment tool used to evaluate a person’s academic skills and knowledge. In this session, learn why you might like to use it, what it doesn't test (and what you might use to supplement your data), and how you can use the data to choose evidence-informed interventions. Attendees will be provided with an intervention guide created for the Learning Difficulties Clinic at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. **This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Monday 31st March 2025 Time: 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost: LDA Member: $30 LDA Student Member: $15 LDA Non-Member: $50 About Melinda de Haan Melinda de Haan is a Learning Intervention Specialist focusing on students with Specific Learning Difficulties and ADHD. She earned her Master's in Learning Intervention from the University of Melbourne in 2019. Since then, she has helped teachers use evidence-based practices to support students with diverse learning needs in a range of primary and secondary schools. In 2024, she joined a philanthropy-funded project between the Royal Children’s Hospital, University of Melbourne, and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute as part of multi-disciplinary care team for children with complex learning difficulties. Currently, she is the Educational Coordinator in the Learning Difficulties Clinic at the Royal Children's Hospital, and she works as a Learning Difficulties Consultant and Literacy Intervention Specialist at Papillon Paediatrics.

Writing is an essential tool for communication and an important instrument for learning across all content areas within schools.  Without the ability to formulate well-crafted sentences using effective transcription skills, correct syntactical and punctuation structures, accurate and fluent spelling, and a diverse vocabulary choice to draw on, students are likely to find the more complex task of writing paragraphs structures problematic. The sentence, although a foundation structure in all written languages, can provide profound compositional challenges for beginning and struggling writers alike. There are several sentence level writing skills that can be explicitly taught to support and improve students’ development of sentence level writing. This session will focus on one such skill: that of ‘sentence combining’ to move students writing skills from simple, to compound, to complex sentences. Students benefit from being provided direct, explicit, and systematic instruction in the purposeful practice of manipulating syntax within sentences to improve their syntactical control within their writing. The research literature on sentence combining during the last 40 years has frequently yielded positive results (Cooper, 1973; Crowhurst & Piche, 1979; Hillocks, 1986; Hunt, 1965; Lee & Lee, 2017; Limpo & Alves, 2013; O’Hare, 1973; Saddler & Asaro, 2008; Saddler, Behforooz, & Asaro, 2008; Saddler & Graham, 2005). Syntactical maturity affords the writer the ability to compose a variety of complex and compound sentences with proficiency. ** This webinar will be recorded and available for 24 months to LDA Consultants** Date: Wednesday 30th April Time: 7pm to 8:30pm AEST Cost: Free (This webinar is funded by the Anne Barton bequest) Bookings LDA Consultants would have received an email with booking details. Please contact enquiries@ldaustralia.org if you need any support. Speaker Kristin Anthian Dip.T(EC), B.Ed(P), PGDip.Ed.St(ECI), M.Ed(SE.I&EI) Serving more than 30 years in various direct teaching and consultancy roles within inclusive and specialist education settings, Kristin holds two undergraduate and two post graduate teaching qualifications, including a master’s degree in Special Education, Early Intervention, and Inclusion from the University of Melbourne.Additionally, Kristin has been certified with the Centre for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI) and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) as a Structured Literacy Dyslexia Interventionist in the US, as well as a certified Special Educator with the Institute of Special Educators (InSpED) in Australia. In 2019 Kristin became the lead author of a whole school Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program with Decodable books titled ‘Snappy Sounds’, published by Macmillan International in the UK. She is an accredited Consultant Member of LDA, the 2020 Rosemary Carter Award Recipient, and a past council member. Kristin currently works in private practice within seven schools west of Melbourne, as well as online,supporting students with diverse and complex learning needs.

A Low Variance Scope and Sequence outlines the “what” and “when” of teaching systematic synthetic phonics. It serves as a precise roadmap for Tier 1 and 2 teaching, ensuring that all students are receiving the same high-quality instruction at the same time. “Low variance” refers to the consistent delivery of content across a cohort; for example, all Year One students will learn the same phoneme-grapheme correspondences on the same day of the same week. A critical component in designing an effective scope and sequence is word selection. The words chosen must act as vehicles for phoneme-grapheme mapping, supporting students in building strong orthographic representations. These words are central to facilitating the self-teaching mechanism, a key driver of reading development. Effective instructional design requires us to consider phonology (how words sound), orthography (how words are spelled), and semantics (what words mean). By integrating these elements, we can select words that highlight the contrasts between different spelling patterns—such as ay, ai, and a-e—and make these distinctions meaningful and memorable for young learners. All phonic instruction must work towards developing instant, automatic and rapid mental graphemic representations of words….in the words of David Kilpatrick, “all words want to be a sight word when they grow up!” We must teach students how to orthographically map words! In this webinar, Jenny will guide participants through the principles of designing a Low Variance Scope and Sequence, with a particular focus on strategic word selection. She will explore how to create optimal entry points into sound-spelling systems and share intervention strategies and assessment approaches to support students with weak orthographic mapping. **This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Tuesday 17th June 2025 Time: 7 pm - 9 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost: LDA Member: $50 LDA Student Member - $40 Non-Member - $70 About Jenny Baker Jenny is the founder of Fremantle Speech Pathology Services, a large private practice in WA. She holds a “Support and Development” role for over 35 Speech Pathologists who are all equipped to assess and treat children with Specific Learning Disorders and Developmental Language Disorders. Jenny has such a wealth of experience and depth of knowledge regarding written language; she iscommitted to employing highly explicit and evidence-based teaching strategies to ensure that workshopparticipants have their learning goals met.

This session, led by the Literacy Leader at Parafield Gardens High School, shares how a whole school approach to vocabulary instruction was implemented to strengthen students’ word knowledge and reading comprehension. It is relevant to both primary and secondary educators and leaders interested in building language for learning. Grounded in the science of reading and language, the initiative was informed by Scarborough’s Reading Rope and focused on addressing how limited vocabulary can affect both learning to read and reading to learn. Staff across all year levels and learning areas were supported to explicitly teach word knowledge - including subject-specific morphology - using a consistent and measurable approach. The session will also showcase a range of practical, teacher-developed resources created to support this work. **This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Monday 30th June 2025 Time: 1 pm - 2 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost LDA Member: $30 LDA Student Member - $15 Non-Member - $50 About Stasha Demosthenous Stasha is the Literacy Leader at Parafield Gardens High School. She began her teaching career as a Year 6/7 teacher and transitioned to the secondary setting when Year 7 moved into high school. Stasha is passionate about literacy and is committed to building teacher knowledge and capacity to improve all students’ literacy outcomes. Since joining PGHS, she has supported staff in developing their understanding of vocabulary and morphology through the use of high-impact literacy strategies. In addition, Stasha has led the school’s work on improving writing instruction, using Joan Sedita’s Writing Rope as a framework to build staff expertise and strengthen student writing across the curriculum. Stasha also coordinates the school’s Tier 2 Reading Acceleration Program (RAP), Tier 3 Reading Acceleration Program, and Tier 2 Language Acceleration Program (LAP). Based on the Sounds-Write program, RAP has significantly improved the decoding skills of many struggling Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 readers.

The research has long established a relationship between learning to read and learning to write. In fact, it is well documented that focusing on reading supports writing and that focusing on writing supports reading. But what does this look like in the classroom or in intervention ? Do we simply segment our instruction into discrete sections as determined by the pillars of literacy instruction or can it be intertwined? Join this practical session to explore current research as well as practical application with a focus on instruction and intervention for primary and early secondary school students. **This webinar will be recorded and available for two weeks after the event** Date: Monday 11th August 2025 Time: 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm AEST (Melbourne Time) Cost: LDA Member: $30 LDA Student Member - $15 Non-Member - $50 About Kathryn Thorburn Kathryn Thorburn holds a Bachelor of Speech Pathology from Newcastle University , along with a Grad Dip Ed and Masters of Teaching UWS – Nepean . She is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist, Member of Speech Pathology Australia and current accredited Teacher with NESA. Kathryn was employed on the NESA English Writers team for the K-2 Syllabus update - January 2021, has been a consultant teacher with Learning Difficulties Australia and is currently a Tutor for SPELDNSW. Kathryn is a current member of Learning Difficulties Australia, SPELDNSW. Within the education sector Kathryn has worked across the DET, Catholic and Independent school sectors in NSW over 20 years. In addition, Kathryn piloted a Rehabilitation Education Liaison Role within HNE Kids Rehab supporting students with mild-moderate TBI back to their mainstream school environment. For the past 10 years Kathryn has been the owner operator of Language and Learning, her small Speech Pathology Private Practice. Kathryn has practical experience as a classroom teacher, co-ordinator, member of school leadership team / school executive and consultant for schools within a regional team. Kathryn has extensive experience managing and implementing whole school change in a K-12 setting in the areas of Literacy, Numeracy and Inclusive Education. Kathryn has provided clinical education to Speech Pathology students from both the University of Newcastle and Sydney University within a Preschool - Year 12 setting and has presented to Speech Pathology students on the topic of Reading & Spelling - Assessment & Intervention for Newcastle University. Kathryn has presented at many conferences including Sharing Best Practice - Sydney, Successful Learning, Inclusive Education Australia, Learning Difficulties Australia National Conference, Science of Teaching and Learning Australia , Speech Pathology Australia National Conference and the Language, Learning and Literacy Conference hosted by DSF - SPELD, WA. Kathryn believes in supporting others to be the best they can be whether it is the students she works with or the professionals she supports.