I have spent some time this term with Primary Masters of Teaching students who are undertaking their professional experience placements for Semester 1. This has provided the excuse to explore some of the issues of student teacher professional experience, and how the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2018) can inform this experience. Mentor Preparation…
One aspect of writing comes up repeatedly in my conversations with teachers – and that is how parents perceive how, and what, we mark to measure success. Most parents are very interested in the writing capabilities of their children. Effective writing is a marker of capability with language, and is the means by which students…
So much has been written about that test, and the messages are confusing. Indigenous students’ literacy and numeracy skills have improved at twice the rate of their peers’ over the past decade, new NAPLAN data shows. Sydney Morning Herald 08/04/2019 … since 2008 there have been statistically significant gains and year levels, particularly at the…
Considering ‘Tetris’. Mark Scott, Secretary of the NSW Department of Education (DoE), was recently part of a collaboration between The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) in a get-together titled ‘Schools Summit – Future frameworks for challenging times’…
The joy of writing; writing is more than just work for achieving an outcome.
‘Swapped at Birth’: an art exhibition which was part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Our work in literacy does not have to have our students tied to a desk, involved in tedious or mind-numbingly repetition and practice.
2019 – new year, new ideas, new perspectives. There will be some retreads and updates of oldies but goodies in everyone’s practice. And we can predict there will be a comeback for some of the repeatedly discredited same old same olds. There are ideas and mantras that keep turning up like uninvited guests. They have…
If you are doing any sort of a road trip with your family this year, the question ‘Are we there yet?’ is one which might become very familiar. The landscape can slip by while we concentrate on our driving, on the need to stop for food or fuel or toilet breaks, and the car talk,…
Talking and listening in the classroom is really the bread and butter of what we do as teachers and learners. While we, the formal assessors, together with the world at large (including parents), might value the written word over talk, and certainly accept the written word for evidence of learning (appropriately constructed, of course), it…