From Screenings to Puppet Shows: Placement in Bairnsdale
In February 2025, second-year Master of Speech Pathology students, Maddie, Nick, and Lily, travelled 270km east of Melbourne to Bairnsdale, land of the Gunaikurnai people, to provide communication screenings for preschool-aged children at a local childcare centre. Accompanied by speech pathology supervisor Joyce Chiu, this was a joint interdisciplinary venture with colleagues from Audiology and Optometry due to attend the same centre in March.
Across three and a half days at the centre, our students completed over forty communication screens with 3- to 5-year-olds. Students engaged in daily reflections and considered how their clinical skills would be transferrable to their next placement in Mae Sariang, Thailand. Students also brainstormed what information to provide as part of relevant clinical handovers to their Audiology and Optometry counterparts.
Following conversations with the childcare centre’s educators and considering results of the communication screens, our students also developed and shared teaching and learning resources with the childcare staff. One of the highlights of the placement was when our students performed a puppet show, providing phonemic awareness skills to children in the kindergarten room.
Whilst a busy (and hot) couple of days, our students also got to enjoy the perks of living and working in rural Victoria – visiting local restaurants, catching a film at the local Sun Theatre and even spotting a small colony of koalas on the nearby Raymond Island!
A huge shoutout to our students for their hard work across this placement and the fantastic team at Bairnsdale Childcare and Kinder for welcoming our students/staff into the community and providing our students with this invaluable opportunity.
By Joyce Chiu.
