I have been prompted to draw attention to oral language in the classroom by an article in Edutopia Weekly. It’s free of charge and well worth a look. This week’s article 4 Strategies for Sparking Critical Thinking in Young Children is about ‘fostering investigative conversation’ in K-2. The importance of talk in the classroom has…
Michael Rosen is a poet who makes words and ideas accessible – often with deep truths, and with themes and ideas that are familiar. And, frequently, very funny.
There is much rich material out there for teachers of all aspects of English and English (and other languages) literacy. It can be difficult to locate just what you want for a specific focus. Here’s some of the good news. PETAA – The Primary English Teaching Association Australia has just released their first fortnightly ‘round-up’…
And some of the 2023 resources available now. With ‘that’ test coming up for Years 3, 5, 7 & 9 in mid-March, there could be a bit of a panic about trying to get our students ‘test ready’. This is misguided and not helpful for student learning. I would like to refer you to Joanne…
How can I be sure of … How do I … When should I … How much reading to my students is too much? Why is … so tricky for my students? Should I really pressure my students to … What does ‘good’ look like? How do I know I am doing it right? What…
Happy 2023! Primary Learning wishes everyone a richly creative pedagogical year. For now, it is rest and re-creation, taking stock of those things that are of greatest importance in our private and professional lives, and rebuilding the energies we will need for the beginning of term. There is a fine collection of readings to dip…
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 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…
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…