And, thank goodness, books continue to be published, read, and loved. Reading has been described as the perfect lockdown-in-COVID-19-activity. In these difficult times, it is worth reminding ourselves, and our students, that: “Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the…
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…
It’s back to school for Term 4 in NSW and for the first time probably all year, students may have some interesting holiday activities to share. Whether they stayed at home, played with cousins, went camping, visited the zoo, grandma’s, or a friend’s house, first day back often involves writing a recount. Well I thought…
Recent research describes the importance and impact of teaching handwriting, particularly in the first four years of school.
What we do in the classroom builds on and around this for each child. We have to treat all literary practices as an integral component of our students’ lives, so that they can take themselves seriously as active participants.
The joy of writing; writing is more than just work for achieving an outcome.
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,…
Dialogic teaching, a term created by Dr Robin Alexander in the early 2000s, harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend students’ thinking and advance their learning and understanding.
Written text can be like music – creative and exciting, thrilling and moving.
Total immersion indeed. PETAA’s ‘Professional Learning Intensive’ was described as presenting writing ‘to teachers in context’. It did that and more in this two days of professional learning for educators from all over the country.