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Our website contains
information on the
courses that we offer, the
most current newsletter,
and the CTAS
Professional Development
Calendar. Our web
address is
www.ctas.wa.edu.au
You can also find us on
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In This Issue
March and April
Student Work
Placement
Team Building
Baby News
New Trainers
Regional In-services
Are you a Leader?
PD in Practice
Inspiration Spot
Sticky Fingers
CTAS Education (National Provider Code 51849) Issue 25: March-April 2017
Welcome
Interesting Happenings during March and April
International Women’s Day, 8 March: This day is used to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women because visibility and awareness help drive positive change for women. Did you know that the World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap wont close entirely until 2186!!! The campaign this year is focusing on #BeBoldforChange, for more information on how to be involved or what you can do at your centre, visit https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme
Harmony Day, 21 March: It’s a day to celebrate our cultural diversity. Its about inclusivenss , respect and a sense of belonging. The message of Harmony Day is EVERYONE BELONGS. How well does that fit into the EYLF theme of Belonging, Being and Becoming! Find out more information, resources, and how to register your event, at http://www.harmony.gov.au/
World Children’s Book Day, 2 April: This day is celebrated to inspire a love of reading. Ask families to bring in their favourite book to read together, or have educators bring in their favourite book from their childhood to read to the children. Try and have each educator read one-on-one with the children during this week. Ask children to “read” their favourite book to an educator. Celebrate reading!
Student Work Placement Hands-on work experience is an integral part of becoming an Early Childhood Educator. When students undertake a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care they are required to complete between 80 and 240 hours of workplace based experience in a registered child care centre. Therefore, we are looking for expressions of interests from early childhood education and care services who are interested in hosting CTAS students on work/practical placement.
At CTAS we ensure our students are work-placement ready by delivering well-rounded, high-quality training and education that encourages students to develop professional skills and essential knowledge as they learn. We ensure students are prepared and organised for all work placements and we ensure the CTAS team are available to provide on-going support and communication through each placement. If you are interested in mentoring students at your workplace, email [email protected].
Build a great team
Team Building Exercises
Team building activities are valuable for improving communication between staff
members and can be a bonding experience. They can be useful for improving
morale and motivation, finding the barriers in the team, identifying team and
individual strengths and weaknesses, and encouraging the development of
problem solving skills.
There are many types of team building exercises, from getting to know you
games to working as a team to achieve a common goal, to group outdoor
obstacle courses. These exercises can take 10 minutes to whole days.
For a childcare service, it may be useful to use different team building
exercises during staff meetings, one activity is called the Marshmallow
Spaghetti Tower.
Develops: Creative Problem Solving and Collaboration
Time needed: 10-20 minutes
What you will need: 200 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, 1 roll of masking
tape, 1m of string or wool and 1 marshmallow per team
Instructions: Using just the items given above, which team can build the highest
tower? The marshmallow must be at the top of the tower and the whole
structure has to stand by itself for
5 seconds.
For more information and ideas
on team building, book into the
CTAS Team Building and Stress
Management workshop 12 April.
Email the team at
Happy news Congratulations to:
Alice, CTAS Trainer, who had a
baby girl born 7 Jan 2017.
Jenna, CTAS Trainer, who had a
baby girl born 9 Feb 2017.
Brooke, CTAS Trainer, who is
expecting a baby in August.
Congratulations!
New Trainers Naomi joins CTAS as a Trainer, she has been working in the Child Care Industry since 2005 and has worked across all age groups. Within this time she gained her Certificate III and Diploma in Early Childhood, as well as her Diploma in School Aged Care. Her last role as an Educator before becoming a Trainer was in both a LDC and OSH setting where she was the assistant director, Room leader, ECT and Educational Leader. For the past 6 months Naomi has been in a Training role.
She is currently studying to become an Early Childhood Teacher, as she would like to help children develop their life long skills as well as their foundation skills such as learning to read and write. Naomi finds working with children to be “the most rewarding career path one can take, as there is nothing quite like the love of a child and the innocence they possess”.
Samantha has been in the childcare industry for 10 years now. She has worked as an educator, room leader, 2IC and educational leader in full time positions and also relief. Samantha joins the Professional Development team, and is very passionate about quality care for children especially in regards to behaviour guidance and children's emotional wellbeing (e.g. self regulation, sense of identity
and general happiness).
Shelley has joined us as a Professional Development Trainer. She has her Diploma in Children's Services, Certificate IV in OSHC & Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. She has 20 years experience in Children's Services including experience as a Qualified Educator and Centre Director and 6 years experience as a Trainer/Assessor in accredited Children's Services training and rural centre support.
CTAS is changing its name
Childcare Training and Accreditation
Solutions is changing its name, we
will now be known as CTAS
Education. This process will take
place over the next few months.
You may see our new logo and hear
our new name in the industry but,
you can still expect the same
professional and passionate training
that we are well known for.
Our vision is unchanged, we still aim
to raise the standard of childcare
training by sharing the knowledge,
skills and experience of our team of
highly qualified childcare
professionals with others through
high quality personal training.
Regional Training?
Professional Development Regional In-services Recently we have had Professional Development In-services in a few regional
areas including Hopetoun, Geraldton, Dongara, Kalgoorlie, and Broome.
If you are a service in a regional area, please contact us for a quote. We are
happy to conduct a training day with up to 3 sessions of your choice, or you
can organise to combine with other services in the area to host the day and
share the costs.
Email the Professional Development Team on: [email protected]
with the number of participants, your preferred dates and topics. A list of topics
is available from our website.
Remember you must use your LDCPDP funding by 30 June 2017. This funding
can be used for CTAS professional training.
Coming up at CTAS: Workplace Health and Safety
Wednesday 8 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm
Embedding Maths and Science into Everyday—Hands on session
Wednesday 22 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm
Reflective Practices
Wednesday 8 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm
Team Building and Stress Management
Wednesday 12 April 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm
See our calendar for full descriptions on these sessions.
Thinking About A Childcare Traineeship? CTAS Education offer traineeships in
CHC30113 Certificate III in Early
Childhood Education and Care,
CHC40113 Certificate IV in School Aged
Education and Care, and CHC50113
Diploma of Early Childhood Education
and Care. If you are thinking of studying
a childcare qualification, CTAS prides
itself in providing high quality training
from passionate, experienced trainers.
Contact Mikayla on 9350 9222 for
further information.
Future Skills courses, subsidised by the
Department of Training and Workforce
Development
Are You a Leader?
By Debra Murphy, CTAS Trainer
In our industry of Early Childhood, I have noticed a lot of staff turnover
due to a many number of reasons. This brings about a constant need
for leaders- not just in management but leaders, mentors, role models,
and educators that staff can look up to and learn from. Every educator
should be leading from where they stand, seeking potential in their
colleagues and using each other’s strengths for best practice and the in
best interest of the children in their care.
Everyone in the team has a role and we want to encourage stepping up
and feeling inspired. How are we motivating our staff? How do we know
what our educators are comfortable doing and what aspects of the job
they truly enjoy? Not everyone likes sweeping/mopping/vacuuming
every day but there is definitely an educator on your team that enjoys
that few minutes off the floor to re-group or that educator that enjoys
having the environment so clean and organised and they are the ones
happy to do it. Find out the strengths of each team member, and then
use those strengths to build a better work environment.
In childcare, we often have a problem when the Educational Leader/
Room Leader is away or sick the whole centre operation standard falls,
the curriculum standards fall, why is that? Why is there no one else
there to step up, delegate the workload and lead? The only way for
staff to gain that leadership is to be given the opportunity all the time-
before this happens.
To be an effective team we need good communication. It is imperative
but so easily forgotten. We should all have a positive respect for each
other, we need to listen to each other and we should be responding to
each other’s needs. Feedback is key- many people shy away from
offering negative feedback but if it is affecting how the room/centre is
operating we should offer it. Negative feedback is often constructive
feedback if delivered in the right way- remaining silent and snapping at
your co-worker does not help the situation at all. Positive feedback is
also important and under-used. Well placed positive and ‘constructive’
feedback delivered on the ‘little and often’ principle drives individual
and team performance.
So some of the key aspects of being an effective leader are finding out
the strengths of each person in our team and using these strengths to
motivate them, supporting each person in the team to be a leader, so
that if the Room Leader or Educational Leader is not present standards
are still maintained, and communicating effectively and respectfully with
the team.
PD in Practice
Little People’s Place Spearwood recently attended
Professional Development training in Child
Protection. After attending this training they put into
practice some of the suggestions they had learnt.
The session discussed how talking to children about
their feelings, and naming feelings can be self
protective strategy for children. If children don’t have
the emotional language and the confidence to use it,
then they won’t be able to talk about feeling unsafe.
They need to be able to recognise how each feeling
look and feels.
The toddler room drew pictures of different feelings
and asked the children to stand behind which one
they were feeling.
Little People’s Place Spearwood
Inspiration Spot Here are some photos from centres, hopefully sharing them will give you inspiration:
Join in
Be a part of our
newsletter, and you could
earn your center a $100
voucher for resources.
Just send in some photos
of your centre’s
makeover, an amazing
experience you have set-
up or your inspiring
environment with a
detailed description
explaining the photos.
Send the photos to
au
Visit us on the web at
www.ctas.wa.edu.au
Childcare Training & Accreditation Solutions
Sticky Fingers
This idea can work in OSHC services
to support children learning about
adding and subtracting. Draw an
outline of their hand, cut it out and
glue down the palm area.
Then write sums, or have the
children write sums, and use the
moveable ‘digits’ to add and
subtract.
Ali received flowers from
Ashlee Lawton from
Gowrie Karawara for all of
her support during
Ashlee’s training
Broome Daycare Centre have a wall with numbers and
common animals written in English and the two Aboriginal
languages of the surrounding area.
Jellybeans Carine are
looking at recycling with
the children, the sorting
containers are on the
floor so children can
assist with the process
Jellybeans Charlottes Vineyard, toddler room set
up (above photo) and “Going on a bear hunt” table
with pictures from the book and instruments to
make the noises e.g. oozy mud, swishy grass
(photo below)