“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Brief, focused writing activities are suitable for including…
The range of English literature, English literacy research, and reading resources that is available to teachers in Australian schools is rich and extensive. Any work we want to prepare for our students, whether in a time of online learning, or for working on in the classroom, is improved when it is based on reliable sources.…
The lead up to the end of the financial year is a good opportunity to build your library with the specials that are available. It is also a great time to subscribe to those organisations that you have been meaning to get around to, because you know they will support you in your work. All…
This is the title of an excellent paper by Judith Scott, William Nagy, and Susan Flinspach (2008). I have used this reference in a previous blog on this site, ‘The beginnings of literacy’, and as the basis of our online course, ‘Exploring literacy: Vocabulary’ (available soon). The paper puts the interactive role of vocabulary learning…
‘The theme for Reconciliation Week this year — More Than A Word: Reconciliation Takes Action — encourages the broader community to consider the steps they can take to promote healing and unity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’ Truth-telling and how cultural repatriation is fundamental to the reconciliation process by Jai McAlister We know…
We’ve talked about NAPLAN before, and how to maximise its usefulness, as with student growth being a more useful gauge of achievement. But concerns remain. Are you concerned about NAPLAN’s relevance to classroom teaching? lack of attention to the full range of key learning areas? relevance to the full range of students in your class?…
The revision of the NSW English K-10 syllabus for Stage 1, so far, maintains ‘audience’ as a key consideration of in the writing process for students: Students need opportunities to explore how language use in texts differs according to the subject matter, purpose and audience. NESA Teaching strategies Stage 1 Audience is defined and explained…
‘Mistranslations’ was the title of one of the exhibitions for Melbourne Design Week 2021 (to April 5). It was devised in response to translation errors and confusing information regarding COVID-19, produced during 2020. Artists from non-English speaking backgrounds were invited to create posters in languages other than English to make the COVID-19 safety messages clear. …
We’ve missed it by a day, but there is always room for poetry. We can honour poetry this week in our classrooms with a bit of history, lots of readings, and even more writing. It’s in the English syllabus so we have to. As I am preparing this, it is STILL raining, and I am…
Authors of successful texts ensure the purpose is clear, and appropriate for the intended audience. … a recent analysis of COVID-19 information on government websites found only two of the 52 documents examined could be read with relative ease. Most of the others were full of long sentences and unnecessarily difficult words where simple language…