Sunshine Speech

03/07/2025

01/07/2025

‘Play’ is back at He Waka Tuia! It is a fun-filled exhibit and I encourage you to take your littles to enjoy it these school holidays! So many fabulous opportunities for interaction and language…and it’s FREE! 🥳

27/12/2024

Just a gentle Christmas reminder, everyone!

26/11/2024

The term ‘word gap’ has given me the ick for years. Glad to see this conversation happening in such a public space.

Most of us have heard about that "word gap" study about how children from lower-income households hear far fewer words in their early years (and may never catch up to affluent kids academically) due to their "lower-quality" home language environments. Well... it turns out the methods of that study were bad science and racially biased.

Letting go of what we thought we knew is hard—especially with deeply entrenched ideas like the "word gap." But reexamining our assumptions is key to building a more just field.

Ready to find out what the evidence tells us about the [spoiler: much more nuanced] relationship between poverty and language ability? Head to https://www.theinformedslp.com/review/Is-socioeconomic-environment-actually-a-risk-factor-for-language-disorders to read our research review, "Is socioeconomic environment actually a risk factor for language disorders?" and earn 23 minutes of CE credit.

[Visual description: Image text reads, "Maybe it’s a “word gap”... or maybe it’s linguistic racism."]

17/10/2024

17/10/2024

DLD Day advocacy celebrations are in full swing in Invercargill! 💜💛💜💛

16/10/2024

Feldwick Gates, the fountains, and the Queen’s Park band rotunda will be lit up purple tonight and tomorrow night in honour of DLD Awareness Day!

15/10/2024

Tiffany Hogan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP defines developmental language disorder, DLD, as difficulty using and understanding language. Dr. Hogan discusses the need to s...

02/10/2024

Our local board game gurus, Solve It and Escape have these AMAZING cooperative games in stock! Go check them out!

01/09/2024

Do you know about Sharing Best Practice? It is a grassroots movement of educators and allied health professionals dedicated to exchanging best practice pedagogies and scientifically-backed methods. It’s about supporting each other to make best practice common practice.

I have the honour of giving both a keynote and a workshop presentation at the inaugural SBP Invercargill. I’d love your support, and with a 2-for-1 ticket price when you buy two tickets or more, it’s a very affordable $25 to attend. You’ll be learning from other educators/allied health professionals from around the region - and it is a fabulous opportunity to mingle with others invested in evidence-based practice.

Check out the write-up:

⭐️Southland Educators!

➡️Free next Saturday morning? Come along to our first Sharing Best Practice at Sacred Heart School 8am-1pm.

⭐️Purchase 2 or more tickets with code '2for1' ($25 a ticket)

This will be a fantastic morning with incredible Keynotes (including our own Erin Palmer!!) and engaging workshops. See below:👇

LITERACY:

👉Erin Palmer, Language in the classroom (KEYNOTE)

👉Megan Pelvin, Gabi Pleace & Kate Chin, Keeping the balance between play and structured literacy (The fabulous Junior team from Fairfield School, Dunedin!)

👉Erin Palmer & Eva Mullally, Teaching sentence structure in the early years using Colourful Semantics

👉Colleen Bennett-Bezuidenhout, Whole-class teaching strategies tailored for multi-year classrooms

👉Rachel Cooper, UFLI: where the Science of Reading meets the Science of Teaching

👉Kerren Crawford, What do DLD, RTLB and SLT have in common?

SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL LEARNING:

👉Dr Freyja Mann, Supporting young people with developmental trauma in the classroom (KEYNOTE)

👉Catherine Barrie, Ready, set, go! Using relational neuroscience and trauma-informed practice to support brains to be ready for learning

MATHS:

👉Jo Loveridge, Trish Bunting & Catherine Huxford, Using manipulatives to help understanding in Maths

👉Linda Baran, Maths No Problem - a mastery approach to maths

LEADING CHANGE:

👉Abby Bates, Leading evidence-based change (doesn't matter what your vehicle is that you want to drive your SL approach...BSLA, The Code, UFLI, MSL, iDeaL - Abby will share strategies you can start implementing straight away to begin building a consistent evidence based pathway for all your students)

🙏Bring along a teaching colleague, come and support these incredible presenters, meet some new people, review your knowledge and learn some new tips and tricks to support your journey.

Tickets➡️

https://events.humanitix.com/sharing-best-practice-southland?c=fb&fbclid=IwY2xjawFBBqlleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcq93Q-nDNqjQkqwVKBHMX5rZNEXIOWmQdPYql2mX6l2JyoWCf9_2TL26g_aem_5B5rFw-0gH1mAitkMK6JZQ

12/08/2024