A BUSY WEEK

We have just held our fourth Professional Development Day...
Three years ago, another aide and I asked our Principal if we could offer a PD day for Teacher Aides in our area....
She was more than enthusiastic, and encouraged us to take it on...
From that humble beginning where we offered to host a PD day for 30 teacher aides but ended up having 45, to this year, when we now have another school come on board with us and between both schools we had over 150 teacher aides register with still around 70 odd being turned away because our registration filled within 3 days....

It was another successful year again this year...
We did a session on Trauma and the Brain which was presented by two child psychologists who were excellent.... Wish we could have listened to them all day...
We also had sessions on using iPads in educational settings,  a session on photo editing and then in the afternoon we looked at Explicit Instruction and what role the Teacher Aides play in assisting the teacher with this... 

Jenny setting up the IWB ready for the day.

Filling up fast/

Hands on sessions in the Computer Lab

Learning about Editing, MovieMaker, PowerPoint, Photo Story.  How to engage kids in their learning.

 The girls had a ball playing on the iPad.... It was all educational.  They all love the hands on sessions

Tricia and Kay learning new things on the iPad

This year we got our tuckshop to cater for our morning tea and they did an excellent job.  Wish I wasn't so busy, and would have remembered to photograph it.
For lunch we ordered in Subway and did nice fruit platters. 

Lovely array of fruit.

Platters of Subway....

The tuckshop ladies also made sure that they had beautiful vases of flowers on our tables.  It all looked so beautiful.

Fresh flowers....

It was a great day and we got lots of positive feedback...
Now that this one is wrapped up, we have the rest of this year off and then it is time to start thinking and planning again for next year.