As all teachers would know, once students return to class, there is a narrow window of time in each school day to focus on lesson planning and resource preparation. Preparing your classroom and day-to-day resources before the new school year helps to reduce stress and allows you to focus on teaching and building relationships with the students in your class.
Before the new school year begins, we spoke with Sales Manager, Emily Garlan, about how MultiLit can help you get set for success in 2023.
Have a plan
Emily says: Schools are a dynamic environment with many competing planned and unplanned priorities each week. Having a clear focus and plan for each week of term provides the framework and consistency for both teaching and learning. You can then return to your plan quickly, and hopefully with ease, should an interruption or unplanned event occur.
All of MultiLit’s literacy programs and resources support teachers to be more productive as they don’t only explain what to teach, but also include explicit instructions on how to teach and access to all the resources required. Whether it is a decodable reader, a lesson handbook or an assessment passage, teachers are provided with explicit teaching instructions and ongoing support, reducing lesson planning and preparation time so you can focus on the task or lesson at hand. There’s no reason for you to spend copious hours recreating the wheel, allowing you to use your allocated planning time more productively.
MultiLit’s comprehensive literacy programs, such as MiniLit Sage and InitiaLit, include scripted lesson plans that can free up hours of planning time each term.
Refresh your consumable resources
Emily says: For InitiaLit users, it is a great idea to order any of the InitiaLit consumables that your students used throughout the previous year ahead of time, particularly if you want to allow time for parents and families to cover the books.
Schools can order their student packs of Home Reading Diaries, More to Explore and Handwriting Workbooks and more throughout the school holiday break from the MultiLit Shop. MultiLit recognises that schools don’t receive deliveries outside of term time, and automatically hold school orders to be sent out in the first weeks of the new term.
You’ll find all the consumables and replacement program components you need for InitiaLit–F, InitiaLit–1, InitiaLit–2, MiniLit Sage, LanguageLift and more on our shop.
Attend the right professional development
Emily says: MultiLit’s PD program is specifically designed to set teachers up for success when delivering any of our literacy programs. PD is offered in face-to-face or live videoconference workshops, and online via our self-paced eLearning platform.
Workshops are not just theory based, but are interactive, providing practical information and opportunities for you to collaborate with your peers, share knowledge and watch lesson demonstrations, so you feel supported and confident to implement as soon as you return to school.
MultiLit PD follows teachers throughout their career and is recognised by schools across all sectors nationwide.
Training in program delivery is required for all core MultiLit literacy programs to ensure quality instruction in the classroom. We also deliver a Measuring Reading Progress workshop that will provide you with a solid understanding of the importance of using data to assess students’ needs throughout the year. See our full PD program and book in today.
Prepare a positive teaching environment
Emily says: Teachers know how important it is to ensure students are ready to receive instruction and to plan for effective classroom management.
In 2022, MultiLit’s Positive Teaching and Learning Initiative launched a fabulous course sequence of PD workshops that come with a wealth of evidence-based tools in the Members’ Area to help you teach alternative, safer and meaningful behaviours to all students, and implement successful pathways to manage challenging behaviours.
Check out the new Community of Practice blended learning option to connect and engage with other practitioners as you work through modules of the Positive Teaching and Learning Initiative.
Get the latest programs and resources
Emily says: The MultiLit Product Development Team have been very busy throughout 2022 working on new resources and programs.
MultiLit’s latest release is LanguageLift, a new intervention program to support children who start school with oral language difficulties. Based on current prevalence data collected by the Australian Early Development Census in 2021, around 4–5 students in every class of 30 have lower than expected language skills at school entry, making LanguageLift a valuable addition to any classroom. The program includes a suite of new resources, a program-specific PD workshop and a wonderful set of 15 storybooks written in-house by the MultiLit team.
The new Wheldall Sentence Comprehension Screener (WSCS) is a quick and effective initial assessment tool for students entering school in the Foundation year. The assessment kit comes with orders of LanguageLift, but can also be purchased separately if you want to screen your new students at the beginning of term and identify those in need of targeted language comprehension assessment and/or support.
Even if you are new to MultiLit’s programs, or perhaps were an early adopter of the original Reading Tutor Program, there may be something new or something you’ve missed over the last couple of years. I recommend taking the time to check out the latest catalogue to review our entire offering.
Teachers should keep an eye on their inbox and social media for release announcements about our new InitiaLit consumables and other new resources in the works for 2023. You can register your interest and take a sneak peek at what’s in store from MultiLit in 2023 on our website.
Be kind to yourself
Emily says: This new year, I would like to remind all teachers to be kind to yourselves and take time to reflect on all the wins (big or small) you have already had throughout your teaching career.
On behalf of the entire MultiLit team, we’d like to wish you all success in your classrooms in 2023 and invite you to contact us if you need any further support in preparing for a productive year.