Belinda Murray

Principal for the day! With 3/4 of our exec team out for the day attending PL, I was put in the chair to do the top job. Such a rewarding and interesting day - in a small school you are across everything! #lovewhereyouteach

@NSWSLI so grateful for two wholesome days of quality professional development 💕

A fulfilling 2 days at heads office taking in leadership ‘good stuff’ at the Middle Leaders Development Program. I’ve joined Cohort 3, working alongside APs across 4 schools where we each implement a project based change. So excited to take on the journey!

A nice little surprise to arrive in the mail this week. Feels pretty awesome to complete further university studies to deepen my knowledge. Thanks to the amazing opportunity of the Teach and Learn scholarship offered by the DoE.

SDD #1 at Gibberagong Education Centre - Enriching our understanding and knowledge building on Country. An amazing day that completely filled my nature loving bucket. Such a wonderful team to enter 2025 with at MKPS.

All in one image...

Chipping away at leadership opportunities and I can highly recommend the program offered by the @NSWSLI for Teacher Leaders to engage in reflective practice and seek guidance from a mentor. I believe this program opened my eyes to so many facets of leadership.

Ready to close the uni chapter 🎉… for now! I finally submitted the last essay for Assessment @UOW to complete my Certificate in TESOL. Grateful for the @NSWEducation to support this with a Scholarship for EAL/D Specialist Teacher 🌏

This past week… We are a small but busy school who show so much appreciation for staff, our community and cultural inclusivity. I had to throw in a sweet little note from a Stage 3 student too 💕 Such a delight to be part of MKPS 😊

Cultural assets in the classroom - bilingual posters can share celebrations as a warm way to support New Arrival students to feel empowered, noticed and included within their new school environment. This student led her peers' involvement and shared ‘Norwuz’ 🙌🏼

Closing my chapter as EAL/D teacher across two school sites this week - ready to step up as APC&I from Monday at Mt Kuring-gai PS. I’m so thankful for the leadership opportunities, wonderful colleagues, amazing kiddos and friendships developed these past 4 years @GosfordPS

Building community connections for our students to enhance tech literacy knowledge. This year long project was born with our EALD parent community. Today Westpac Portfolio Director taught students Microsoft skills on their own and school devices. I’m so proud of this initiative.

First day as a prac student 👩🏻‍🎓 as part of my TESOL qualifications I’ve reached out to my network and will be learning at this beautiful school. Wonderful to see a different setting, observe quality practice, meet new colleagues and adorable students #lovewhereyouteach #NSWDoE

Connecting home to learning - My NAP student from Iran told me the beach was her favourite natural place to visit. We painted her beach with her favourite things and located her beach on a map. Seeing joy in her mothers’ eyes as she ran to tell her about her art was 💯 🥰

Today I supported a New Arrival student to complete the TTFM survey. Their reflections on their teacher, feedback and resources were positive, but answering feeling like they belong = strongly disagree. Heart breaking stuff. What have you done to help a minority feel included?

Anchor charts that are made with students have deeper impact as the ‘third’ teacher. I love this range in one of the Year 4 classrooms @GosfordPS - especially the Frayer Model chart being adopted after 1:1 PL to support EAL/D learners 🫶🏼 what’s good for EAL/D 🟰is good for all 🧡

Explicitly teaching mathematics vocabulary through hands on activities. Look at our yr 1 students converting a number to “equivalent” number sentences. When kids are so engaged, using the vocab and want larger numbers to challenge themselves 🟰 you’re onto a good lesson.

Split Books - a-go to for split classes, however they are a challenging jigsaw EAL/D students. This example of a prompt for Stg2 persuasive writing shows unknown vocabulary. It highlights how language demands can inhibit a student from independent tasks and missed opportunities.

Navigating the playground can be so overwhelming for Newly Arrived students. That’s why creating positive engagement through games and play is so important in those first few weeks. Today I taught hopscotch and it was amazing to see how many other students wanting to join us!

As ARCO @GosfordPS I kicked off sharp impactful learning with a 3 lesson sequence for our Stage 1 students to open up and ‘talk’ about racism. With 48% EALD, our students were quick to recognise ways to be inclusive to everyone and recognise racism. Texts from HPERC 🤎🧡💛