Annette Gray is a literacy consultant and adviser. She has many years’ successful teaching experience in classrooms K-10 across Australia and in international settings.

Let’s Talk!

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…

A selective focus shot of a hand holding cleaning concentrate handwritten recipe

English & Literacy resources PETAA

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’…

Writing – who is it for?

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…

AARE most popular posts of all time

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…

Words words words

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…

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Resources for text & reading

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…