Term Talk

About Term Talk

I'm so glad you're here, I'm your host Nicola. 🩵✨ Term Talk is a podcast for primary education, made in Australia and written for teachers everywhere. It is grounded in the belief that teachers don't have all the answers and that meaningful professional growth happens through curiosity, collaboration, research-informed practice, and honest reflection. Early in my career, I wished for a mentor to guide me through uncertainty in teaching. What I had instead was curiosity and a deep drive to keep learning, asking better questions, and growing through experience. Through personal experiences, thoughtful conversations, and reflective insights, each episode explores what it really means to: ✨Keep learning through mistakes + challenges in education. ✨Ask better questions + engage more deeply with educational research. ✨Reflect honestly on teaching practice + professional identity. ✨Build confidence as an educator without pretending to have it all figured out. This is not a podcast about overnight success or polished teaching solutions. It is about progress, experimentation, and choosing to begin, even when teaching feels uncertain or messy. Term Talk embraces the human side of teaching and creates space for educators to feel supported, empowered, and confident to lead, learn, and thrive in their own authentic way. New episodes drop weekly. Follow along, listen in, and let this podcast become part of your professional learning routine. ✨ Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndibernardo 🩵 Visit the website: https://termtalk.com.au/ ✨ Join the Term Talk Hub for tools and resources built for teachers: https://hub.termtalk.com.au/

Publisher

Nicola Di

Category

education · education · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Jan 2026

Latest episode

23 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

30 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   23 Aug 2026

   Thinking routines, without the performance

   🤔💭 Thinking routines became a thing you're supposed to be doing. There's a poster in the room next door, someone mentioned them in a staff meeting, and when you've tried them, they felt a bit flat. The class went through the motions, and you weren't sure anything changed. This episode is about the gap between the routine as a poster and the routine as a real shift in how children think. A thinking routine isn't an activity. It's a way of making invisible thinking visible, and it only works when the room is safe enough for children to show you thinking that isn't finished yet. Let's unpack why routines produce performance in unsafe rooms and genuine thought in safe ones, why one routine used often beats ten used once, and how to start this week with something small, spoken, and shared. ✨ In this episode: Why routines feel flat: compliance versus actual thinking. The scaffold's real job: slowing thinking down enough to be visible. Why see think wonder works: separating observation, interpretation and curiosity. The chain again: connection, safety, thinking, then tools. One routine, used often, out loud: the habit of mind approach. One thing to try this week: one routine on one small moment. Free resource: a one-page guide to three thinking routines to start with, what each is for, and when to reach for it. Free with a free Term Talk Hub account. 🎉Term Talk Hub is Live: https://hub.termtalk.com.au/ (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/) Create your free account here (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/). Everything is now in one place - your free resources, your tools and everything we have been building behind the scenes to support you as a teacher. What else is in the Hub? ✨LessonLift and PotentialPath. LessonLift builds curriculum-aligned lesson plans for NSW K to 6 English and Maths, so you are never really starting from scratch. PotentialPath is your extension tool for high-potential learners who have already mastered the content and are ready for more. Join the Hub membership now: TermTalkHub (https://termtalk.com.au/) 🎧 Listen now and follow Term Talk for weekly conversations on teaching, professional growth, and the human side of education. The mentor you deserved from day one. Connect with me: ✨ Instagram: @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/) ✨ LinkedIn: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndibernardo) 🩵 Join the Term Talk Hub (https://www.termtalk.com.au/)for online tools and resources built for teachers. Questions? Reach out to me on Instagram @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/)or email support@termtalk.com.au (mailto:support@termtalk.com.au). I would love to hear from you! Keywords: thinking routines primary school, visible thinking classroom, see think wonder how to use, Project Zero thinking routines, making thinking visible primary, critical thinking routines classroom, why thinking routines don't work, thinking culture classroom, habits of mind primary students, classroom talk strategies, invisible load of teaching, primary teaching podcast Australia, Term Talk podcast

2. 

   16 Aug 2026

   The fast finisher is telling you something

   🤓 'I've finished.' Four minutes in. And now the rest of your lesson becomes supplying entertainment to the kids who work fastest. This episode is about why the fast finisher has been misunderstood. A child who finishes in four minutes isn't a logistics problem to be managed with the early finisher box. It's feedback. They're telling you the ceiling of the task was too low, or that they're ready to move on, or that the work felt like something to get through rather than get into. Each of those is useful information, but only if you read the fast finish as a signal instead of plugging it as a hole. Then the practical shift: designing depth into the task itself instead of bolting a second activity beside it. One built-in extension line, and 'I'm done' turns back into 'I'm thinking'. ✨ In this episode: Busy is not stretched: what the early finisher box actually teaches. Finishing fast is data: three things it might be telling you. Low floor, high ceiling revisited: tasks that open instead of end. The worked example: one sentence task, ceiling raised in one line. Three phrases that reopen thinking: show me the why, find another way, convince me. One thing to try this week: one task, one built-in extension. Free resource: a fast-finisher extension prompt set, question stems that deepen any task without planning a second one. Free with a free account in the Hub! Log in to access 🎉🩵 🎉Term Talk Hub is Live: https://hub.termtalk.com.au/ (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/) Create your free account here (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/). Everything is now in one place - your free resources, your tools and everything we have been building behind the scenes to support you as a teacher. What else is in the Hub? ✨LessonLift and PotentialPath. LessonLift builds curriculum-aligned lesson plans for NSW K to 6 English and Maths, so you are never really starting from scratch. PotentialPath is your extension tool for high-potential learners who have already mastered the content and are ready for more. Join the Hub membership now: TermTalkHub (https://termtalk.com.au/) 🎧 Listen now and follow Term Talk for weekly conversations on teaching, professional growth, and the human side of education. The mentor you deserved from day one. Connect with me: ✨ Instagram: @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/) ✨ LinkedIn: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndibernardo) 🩵 Join the Term Talk Hub (https://www.termtalk.com.au/)for online tools and resources built for teachers. Questions? Reach out to me on Instagram @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/)or email support@termtalk.com.au (mailto:support@termtalk.com.au). I would love to hear from you! Keywords: fast finishers primary classroom, early finisher activities alternative, what to do with fast finishers, extension activities primary school, extending able students, low floor high ceiling tasks, open ended task design, challenging quick finishers, depth over busywork, gifted students regular classroom, task design primary, invisible load of teaching, primary teaching podcast Australia, Term Talk podcast

3. 

   10 Aug 2026

   They are children, not adults

   🫣🚫 A child melts down over something small, and a tired voice in your head says the quiet thing: 'they should be able to handle this by now'. This episode is about the expectation underneath that moment. We expect children to manage feelings we have never actually taught them to name. Emotional regulation isn't a trait some children have and some don't. It's a skill, and like every skill it has to be taught, modelled and practised before anyone can do it alone. I walk through what's actually happening inside a dysregulated child, why a feeling you can't name can only be acted out, and why co-regulation, borrowing your calm before they can build their own, is the real mechanism behind learning to self-regulate. Then the practical layer: naming feelings out loud on a child's behalf, using an emotion wheel as a shared language rather than wall decoration, and why the calm you hold in those moments is some of the most skilled and draining work in teaching. ✨ In this episode: Regulation is a skill, not a trait. A feeling you can't name, you can only act out. Co-regulation: why children borrow your calm before they own their own. Why matching their intensity always backfires. Name it, then they can claim it: building emotional vocabulary in real moments. The invisible cost of staying calm, and why it deserves naming. One thing to try this week: name one feeling out loud before you do anything else. Free resource in the HUB: a classroom feeling naming card you can point to in the moment. Log in to access 🎉🩵 🎉Term Talk Hub is Live: https://hub.termtalk.com.au/ (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/) Create your free account here (https://hub.termtalk.com.au/). Everything is now in one place - your free resources, your tools and everything we have been building behind the scenes to support you as a teacher. What else is in the Hub? ✨LessonLift and PotentialPath. LessonLift builds curriculum-aligned lesson plans for NSW K to 6 English and Maths, so you are never really starting from scratch. PotentialPath is your extension tool for high-potential learners who have already mastered the content and are ready for more. Join the Hub membership now: TermTalkHub (https://termtalk.com.au/) 🎧 Listen now and follow Term Talk for weekly conversations on teaching, professional growth, and the human side of education. The mentor you deserved from day one. Connect with me: ✨ Instagram: @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/) ✨ LinkedIn: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndibernardo) 🩵 Join the Term Talk Hub (https://www.termtalk.com.au/)for online tools and resources built for teachers. Questions? Reach out to me on Instagram @termtalkpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/termtalkpodcast/)or email support@termtalk.com.au (mailto:support@termtalk.com.au). I would love to hear from you! Keywords: emotional regulation primary students, co-regulation in the classroom, teaching children to name feelings, emotional literacy primary school, why children can't self regulate, behaviour is communication, meltdowns in the classroom, emotion wheel for kids, dysregulated students strategies, calm teacher dysregulated child, zones of regulation alternative, teaching emotions primary, invisible load of teaching, primary teaching podcast Australia, Term Talk podcast

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Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

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