Recently I had the opportunity to visit Tarumbal Kindergarten/Preschool in Rockhampton. It is a kindergarten that enrols young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. A few of the children that attend the centre are related and this makes it feel like a big family. I observed and interacted with the children once a week for four weeks. In that short time the children grew to like me and accept me into their group. I felt that I was treated as a part of their extended family.

The first and probably most important piece of advice that anyone can give to prospective teachers of Aboriginal children is to ‘watch your language’. Whether or not the children speak an Aboriginal language as their first language, a Creole or a Pidgin or a version of Aboriginal English, with standard English as either a second language or second dialect, opportunities for miss-communication and non-communication abound.

Nulungu is the name of a water hole (near Broome) where two legendary hero men of Aboriginal culture rested for a while eating and drinking. From Nulungu they went through the North straightening out the Law. Young people come to the College and they too rest a while to share their learning at the water that each gives to and takes from. They return to their people to share what they know.

‘Language immersion’ has been regarded with suspicion for roughly two decades by many educators wishing to be loyal to the goals of bilingual education in indigenous groups. In this paper I argue that we should not be suspicious of immersion in a generalised way as an approach to both first and second language teaching among these groups. Rather, we should define those conditions under which immersion might be dangerous and those under which it might be helpful to the language aspirations of indigenous minorities.

Most educationalists now acknowledge the pedagogical power of the Whole Language or Language Experience approach to the teaching of reading and other language skills. This approach is particularly valuable in remote Aboriginal schools where teaching resources can be made culturally relevant by centering learning around local and community driven experiences. Once a theme has been selected (usually around a personal or mediated experience such an excursion or other activity or a Big Book), the children are immersed in the oral and written language that arises from this experience. Activities may include creating a negotiated text, modelled writing, co-operative cloze and formulating a personal response to the experience. A thematic approach seeks to provide sufficient repetition of language structures and vocabulary for children to increase their fluency as readers and to generally expand their skills as language users.

The mastery of beginning reading skills by Aboriginal students is still an area of ongoing concern. The discussion paper released as part of the National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people (1994) points to 45% of Aboriginal students having significantly lower levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy than other Australian students despite the intervention programs that have been developed and implemented. The Review also recommends that to improve this situation an emphasis needs to be placed on literacy programs “which identify difficulties as early as possible and which deliver special assistance to improve and maintain literacy achievements at the earliest possible time”(1994). The purpose of this article is to provide an example of one such program that has been developed around new research into the area of early reading development and used successfully with young Aboriginal students.

Aboriginal Studies and how to teach Aboriginal and Tones Strait Islander students were the focus of the Queensland Yatha Conference.