1 Day Workshop
This one day workshop is a very practical and hands on workshop with examples linking play abilities to the Australian curriculum. This workshop would be valuable to professionals who work in schools and are interested in play, language and literacy. The Pretend Play Checklist for Teachers (PPC-T) Manual and Pack of Assessment Scoring Forms, as well as the recently released book Learning Through Play in the Primary School: The Why and the How for Teachers and School Leaders are included in the cost of the workshop and will be posted to all registrants prior to the workshop.
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WORKSHOP PRESENTERS
KAREN STAGNITTI
Karen Stagnitti is Emeritus Professor in the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. She is retired from full time teaching and research but continues to write and occasionally run workshops. She graduated with a Bachelor degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Queensland. For over 40 years she has mainly worked in early childhood intervention programs in community-based settings as part of a specialist paediatric multidisciplinary team. In 2003 she graduated from LaTrobe University with a Doctor of Philosophy. Her area of research is children’s play. Karen has over 150 publications, including journal articles, book chapters, and books. She has developed several play assessments including: Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment, the Pretend Play Enjoyment Developmental Checklist and the Animated Movie Test. From this research, Learn to Play Therapy was developed. Throughout the year, she is still invited by national and international colleagues to contribute to books by writing book chapters or editing.
LOUISE PAATSCH
Professor Louise Paatsch is the Deputy Director of Deakin University’s Strategic Research Centre in Education – Research for Educational Impact (REDI), and a Chief Investigator at the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Her research focuses on children’s and young people’s communication, language, pretend play, and literacy development, with a strong focus on metapragmatic and pragmatic language use and the link to social communication. She also investigates teachers’ talk patterns and intentional teaching practices in supporting children’s and young people’s communication, language, and play abilities. Louise also undertakes research that focuses on the communication, spoken language and literacy abilities of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and young people. She also works with teachers, educators and allied health professionals to explore their own practices as reflective researchers to support positive outcomes for children, young people, and their families.
For further information on this workshop and for additional dates, please see our Play in Schools for Teachers and Therapists workshop page.


