It’s almost the end of November. This is often the ‘cut-off’ point in our thinking too heavily about our classroom work. It is also the cut-off point for some amazing offers for us as we prepare to put EVERYTHING to do with school away for a couple of weeks. Making the most of collecting what’s…
I’ve been wondering recently about how to help students make connections between concepts and to their prior knowledge in the classroom. We know that mathematical ideas are connected and often build on each other, so how to ensure students ‘see’ these links? I think we have been moving in a good ‘direction of understanding’ in…
I had the great pleasure of delivering a session at the 2022 PETAA ‘Leading with Literacy’ Conference last weekend, as part of the 50th ‘Birthday’ celebrations. The conference title was ‘’From babble to Batavia & beyond’, and we experienced a selection of amazingly informative and inspirational presentations on aspects of literacy. My topic was Vocabulary…
We have to keep thinking about why we write The writing that happens in K-6 classrooms ostensibly meet the guidelines of curriculum documents. Three types of texts, and that choice of structure, grammatical features and literary devices will be made on the basis of each type. Writing is certainly being taught, but the results on…
What a joy it was to be back attending an in-person conference! We hadn’t had a face-to-face MANSW conference since 2019 so it was great to see many familiar faces as well as meet some new teachers of mathematics. It was a lovely venue in sunny (most of the time) Tweed Heads/Coolangatta. The conference theme…
PETAA Annual Conference The theme for PETAA’s 50TH year is Looking back- moving forward and this conference will focus on supporting students to develop strong communication and literacy foundations – from first speech, learning language through play and experimentation, to the skills needed in learning to read, then what is required when students read to…
How do I create a lesson sequence? This is a question I get asked a lot, both by pre-service and in-service primary teachers. You may feel you are great at designing single lesson ideas that are related or whole programs, but maybe the flow could be better – more conceptually than topically related. For example,…
EVERYTHING you need to know about Book Week is at the CBCA website with the list of all the winners and Honour books for 2022 (and previous years too). As well, PETAA (Primary English Teaching Association Australia) has Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) guides, and there is a link to teaching units of work…
In this blog I’m exploring the mathematics students can notice in everyday scenes and objects. Images are a great stimulus for mathematical discourse in the classroom and make for a great way to launch your lesson and ‘hook’ students into the maths. I have lots of images in our resource section for noticing and wondering…
August is designated official poetry month by Red Room Poetry. Their website has heaps of things you can do for yourself, to enjoy and participate in poetry in various ways. For students there is the fabulous ‘Poem Forest’, a nature poetry prize. The prize has been created collaboratively by Red Room Poetry and the the…