Literacy

Developing targeted programs to meet individual learning needs includes making the best use of staff expertise, and working closely with parents. EAL Support and Intervention Leader Kate Plant shares her school’s approach.

How can schools best work with parents to support students and improve their learning? Dr Tanya Vaughan and Susannah Schoeffel explore two evidence-based recommendations from a new guidance report for Australian practitioners, and share practical examples of action.

‘How quick we are as teachers to put our students on the spot to write a complete narrative piece and wonder why we are constantly plagued with, “I can't think!”. South Australian primary school teacher Bec Drozdoff explains how she tackles this challenge in her writing lessons.

How do preschool services support children to develop language and literacy skills and help them get ready for school? A recent study has explored this question and provides some practical literacy activity ideas.

In today’s reader submission, primary school teacher Melissa Wray shares the findings of her small-scale research project investigating how primary teachers use picture story books, and how it has influenced her own classroom practice.

A new study examines the types of questions preschool teachers ask during classroom-based shared book reading. It found that they were far too simple for students and didn’t provide the appropriate level of challenge. In today’s podcast, we speak to Dr Tricia Zucker to find out more.

These past couple weeks at Teacher have been jam-packed. We welcomed a number of guests – from the eSafety commissioner to the ARIA Music Teacher of the Year – and we also featured a lot of content on the topic of literacy. Catch up on anything you might’ve missed in today’s podcast.

How do schools go about building a supportive reading culture? To answer this question, Dr Margaret Merga went straight to the source – teacher librarians – to gain their valuable insights into the factors that enable and constrain the development of a whole school reading culture. Here, we explore her findings.

In this extract from her new book, award-winning Teacher Librarian Megan Daley shares her tips for designing and stocking a dedicated recreational reading area in your classroom, and how to create inviting library spaces for your school.

Oxford University Press compiled a list of the 500 most frequently used words written by students in Australia in their first three years of schooling. This video infographic looks at how the list has changed over time and some interesting gender differences.