Our projects

The Open Language Portal  contains over 2,000 teaching resources in 17 languages that have been created and shared by Community Languages teachers.

The website provides free access to language specific resources, generic language teaching resources and professional learning information.

Community language teachers around the world contribute to the site by uploading resources via the online submission function, these resources are all checked for quality and copyright before publishing.

Our project officers work with schools developing and collecting resources, encouraging teachers to share and run workshops and organising professional learning using the up-to-date lesson plans and teaching materials.

The site receives over 2,000 hits a month from across Australia, North America Asia and Europe.

The 3600 volunteer teachers in NSW community language schools represent a valuable resource for education.

Our research indicates 80% of teachers have tertiary qualifications; most want to be teachers in Australia but only 3% have managed to do this.

SICLE’s pathways to accreditation for these teachers has the double benefit of addressing the teacher shortages in all subject areas and increasing diversity in the teaching profession.

Our website www.mteach.org.au provides user-friendly information where interested teachers can register for our regular information sessions.

The lack of information about further study or career options is the main barrier for volunteer teachers finding employment or further study in Australia. 

We then provide individual sessions with our Careers Advisors and also assessment and advice on English language proficiency, teachers can then undertake our tertiary preparation program or English language programs at Western Sydney University.

Western Sydney University offers upgrading Master of Teaching programs in primary and secondary education. Over 50 teachers have graduated so far in languages, EAL STEM and other subject areas.

SICLE has developed pathways to language teaching for existing and prospective teachers.

The Language Proficiency Test (LPT)* in 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Samoan, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Vietnamese is available for existing teachers who are fluent in the language or for those wanting to undertake a Master of Teaching program at any university.

The test provides permanent status to teachers working in the NSW DoE community languages program and is free of charge to all NSW DoE K-6 teachers. More than 200 applicants have passed this test since 2019.

*Under teacher accreditation authority guidelines, native speakers of a language are eligible to be accredited language teachers if they have evidence from an Australian university of their level of proficiency.

Language Proficiency Tests - SICLE - Masters of Teaching

We also are running a 45-hour online self-paced program in Language Teaching Methodology.

Successful completion of this program and a teaching practicum placement gives existing secondary teachers approval to teach languages as a third method and a languages specialist status to primary teachers.

Over 100 teachers will complete this program in 2024.

Language Teaching Approval Program - SICLE - Masters of Teaching

We are developing Language Progressions and Passport to accredit student language learning.

At present there is no way for any student learning any language at any stage of schooling to show what they know and can do in languages. SICLE’s languages progressions will provide reliable and valid accreditation of language learning for students in primary, secondary and community languages schools.

Progressions are common in Science, Mathematics, Literacy and English as an Additional Language as sequences of steps that describe learning.

We have developed ‘milestones’ in Arabic and Chinese based on existing research into first, second and heritage language development.

Academics and expert language teachers have used student work samples to develop indicators for each milestone, the progressions align with current syllabuses.

In 2023 and 2024 we will train teachers and trial the progressions in primary, secondary and community languages schools. The eventual outcome will be an online Passport for Languages that will have a permanent record of the listening, speaking, reading and writing level attained by each student.

This Passport will also include student self-assessment and can be carried across schools and stages of schooling to show evidence of proficiency, the progressions in Arabic and Chinese will form a model for the development of other languages.

What are the benefits? The progressions credit learning no matter where it occurs; they provide teachers with a diagnostic tool for planning and programming; they give students and their families evidence of what has been learned and they give status to language learning.

Language progressions project

SICLE has a team of 17 Project Officers for the main languages taught in Community Languages schools: Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Greek, Korean, Tamil, Japanese, Punjabi, Dari/Persian, Turkish and Assyrian.

We are starting a project identifying Project Officers also for smaller language groups in 2023/2024.

Our project officers run professional learning workshops, student events and provide support and advice to schools.

The key aspect of their work is that they start from the schools’ specific needs and deliver workshops in the community language.

During covid-19, they shifted online and ran over 80 workshops for some 850 teachers on how to teach using zoom and other platforms.

The attendance at all workshops since covid has increased including community languages teachers from across Australia and internationally; many mainstream teachers also participate in the workshops.

The Project officers also run student language events to motivate student learners and to raise the profile of language learning in the community. ‘Arabic and me’, a student Arabic competition for K-10 students from all sectors attracted over 167 submissions from students and schools. Mini-conferences for Chinese teachers have in the past attracted over 200 teachers.

The project officers are central to the success of SICLE.

The most common request we receive from teachers and Community Languages schools is to learn how to use IT in class.

The students are exposed to all forms of technology in mainstream schools and in their daily lives. Gaining skills in technology to engage students is, therefore, the priority for schools.

We undertook a video/digital storytelling project in the Bonnyrigg Khmer school.

Khmer is a smaller and lower-SES community with students who are second and third generation Australians.

Project manager Dr. Kirsty McGeoch trained teachers in digital storytelling and then supported them as they worked with students on a range of projects.

Watch our Digital storytelling videos on YouTube to learn more:

• How the process works (7:24 mins)
• How to make traditional Cambodian beef skewers (2:54 mins)
• Students self-produced films about favourite food and animals (9:56 mins)

In collaboration with academics and researchers from the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London we support our teachers in participating in the ‘Critical Connections Project’, a project that brings students from across the world to create and share multilingual, multi-disciplinary digital stories online.

The Critical Connections Project focusses on a student-centred, inter-disciplinary, thematic, CLIL and/or Project-based learning (PBL) approach to teaching and learning languages. This project enables students and teachers to make connections across curriculum areas, languages and cultures and sites of learning.

The purpose of involvement in the project is to motivate and engage language learners by giving them agency and enabling them to demonstrate the power of their language through film, visual art, poetry etc.

In the past two years ten NSW Community languages schools along with more than 30 schools from eight other countries have participated in this project creating multilingual films that explore the theme of “Our Planet”. In 2023, 27 languages were represented in the students’ works.

MDST Main Site | A Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project

Twenty-nine key teachers in NSW primary schools trialled and developed 48 units of work in nine languages for use in Community Languages Schools.

Twenty-five key teachers in the NSW government K–6 Community Languages Program are developing units of work in nine community languages: Arabic, Assyrian, Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Macedonian, Tamil, Turkish.

The units reflect quality teaching and rich-task outcomes aligned with new K–10 languages syllabuses. Some of these are available at our Open Languages Portal.

Teachers participated in workshops and received in-school support to trial and evaluate these units with their students. Participants in the Community Language Teaching (Advanced) Program are extending and adapting these units to another 20 languages each year.

Zoe Hogan and Victoria Campbell have been running workshops for teaching on process drama.

Teachers work through traditional stories trialling a range of drama strategies and developing tales to be relevant to their own experiences.

In the 2023 workshops, teachers are working on traditional tales from their own backgrounds. The aim of these workshops is to spread the use of drama across community languages schools because of the value of drama in developing language and cultural understanding.

The workshops have been particularly valuable for schools in engaging older students.

SICLE has started a project this year on teaching young learners. Over 12% of schools have under-fives attending.

This project will explore what is happening in schools and what the professional learning strengths and needs of teachers are.

The project will lead to guidelines and Professional Learning modules for schools and teachers.

It is estimated that 10% of all learning have specific educational needs but there has never been support for community Languages schools in this area.

SICLE will be finding out how schools do and can support all students to access and fully participate in learning, supported by reasonable adjustments and teaching strategies tailored to meet their individual needs.

We will run pilot groups of teachers sharing and developing classroom strategies and then develop professional learning resources in community languages in collaboration with the NSW DOE and others.

One third of languages in the CL schools have fewer than 100 students; one third of CL schools have only one or two classes.

SICLE is starting a project to support schools with limited resources and capacity. We will be working with key contacts in each school, connecting them to national and international support networks and working to build resources, programs and school capacity.