Category Archives: Teaching

Jez – the old chestnut – ability grouping or streaming – is still being touted as a solution to falling standards!

Sorry Natasha, education editor for the Australian Newspaper, wrote a recent article on the state of education in Australia using the results of the recent PISA tests to say that our students are bored out of their brains at school, … Continue reading

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What I consider a balanced article to the issues around learning to read and reading to learn.

Why we’re failing to build the knowledge students need Age Newspaper 15/12/2023. In the early years of school, teaching should focus on systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, exposure to rich literature through read-alouds, and explicit teaching to build … Continue reading

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Reading Instruction, Yes it’s still a debate!

Today, I’ve stumbled upon two “texts”, one a discussion podcast and one an article around the Science of Reading. As one who has taught and led the teaching of reading for many years in and around schools I find the … Continue reading

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Changes to Teacher Training

Newspapers (e.g. Age , Sydney Morning Herald)are reporting that an “expert teacher education panel” recommendations have been accepted by the various States education ministers to reform initial teacher education. The report identified several perceived weaknesses with initial teacher education includes … Continue reading

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Parents want more than jobs out of education for their children.

The Australian Newspaper features an article by Chris Mitchell “Parents want education system to prep kids for jobs, not political activism”. In the article he makes a number of claims and offers solutions which I think need a response. Mitchell’s … Continue reading

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Maribyrnong Network of School Leaders

This post is to follow-up our network day on the first 2 steps of Data Wise. We spoke about answering the WHY question when change is being advocated – as we are about to advocate for change in collaboration in … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment, differentiation, Feedback, Instruction, Leadership, Networks of Schools, professional learning, Teaching, Uncategorized, Video Clips | Leave a comment

Inferencing in the early years

This week I’m writing about inferencing. It’s nearly 5 months into the Australian academic year for our Foundation to Year 2 students and teachers have built Reading Workshops where students build sufficient reading stamina for guided groups to run, where learning … Continue reading

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Lesson Transitions

About 9 months ago I started working as a casual academic for Deakin University, Faculty of Education, in Victoria. Students are placed in schools for at least 80 days, depending upon their course. They work along students and experienced teachers … Continue reading

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Why have learning intentions without success criteria?

John, in this 9 min clip, puts the case for why we need to explain what we intend students to learn, why and how they might self assess success. It’s hard to defend the opposite. In this clip John’s work … Continue reading

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Is Dante’s Hell a view of adaptive challenges? If so, hold onto that moral compass.

I recently watched a TED talk by Dan Leahy – The Dance of Learning Meets the Adaptive Challenge. In the talk Dan uses Heifetz, Glashow and Linsky’s need for adaptive change which is about facing the unknown and having to learn new skills to … Continue reading

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Effective Lesson Planning: classroom systems and lesson sequencing

This is a follow up post number 2 on effective lesson planning. Now that we understand lessons should go differing lengths of time 20 – 40 minutes, what would that look like in one of the timetable blocks of 90-120 … Continue reading

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Effective Lesson Planning: length of lessons

Some of the questions, concerns and issues raised by trainee teachers so far include: constantly repeating instructions to students students forget what to do students either don’t finish the tasks in the time set or finish in the first 5 … Continue reading

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Working at Deakin University

One of the exciting opportunities that has presented itself this year is to work at Deakin University as a casual academic. What that means is that I work in the professional learning unit supporting trainee teachers in schools learn the … Continue reading

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Dirty Data!

Well I’m now officially retired as a school principal – no really! I’m sleeping well, planning holidays and of course playing more golf. But what about my mind – it’s not ready to give up as an educator. So I’m … Continue reading

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Why become a teacher? part two – my story

Some people can pinpoint a single incident or person that answers this question – for me I need to tell a story as I came to my moral purpose quite late. I went as a young 5-year-old to Corpus Christi, … Continue reading

Posted in reflections, school, teacher efficacy, Teaching | 2 Comments