Reading

In today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom, we shine a spotlight on reading. From encouraging students to find a love of reading, to ensuring they have access to a wide variety of texts, to the books children borrowed most frequently from libraries in 2020 – there was so much to squeeze into today’s podcast.

‘Every assembly I read a book to the whole school and I expect all of our teachers to be reading aloud to our kids every day.’ Christies Beach Primary School Principal Catherine O’Dea shares why encouraging students to develop a love of reading is the key aim of the South Australian school’s improvement plan.

The most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey measured the attitudes held by 15-year-olds on reading. An Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Snapshot report has analysed these attitudes, and looked at how they differ between girls and boys, Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and most disadvantaged and least disadvantaged students.

New data show which books were borrowed most frequently by children and young adults in libraries throughout 2020. Here, we share which books made the top 10 list and how the pandemic has changed library borrowing habits.

Staff at St Rita’s College in Brisbane have worked with researchers to implement an academic reading skills intervention for Year 7s. The ‘Lost in Transition’ project merges evidence from the literature with research in the context of the school to meet student needs.

Learning to read is a complex task for children, and there are many evidence-based approaches to teaching children to read. So, how do children learn to read? How can teachers be most successful in reading instruction? We share five resources which seek to answer these questions.

A research project has analysed the text lists for the Senior Victorian English curriculum between 2010 and 2019. In this video, we look at the diversity in text type, story setting, exploration of themes, and other characteristics of these texts.

A study involving 25 teachers who are also speech-language therapists has provided insight into the barriers and facilitators for effective collaboration between the two professions. Here, we speak to the report’s authors on the findings and implications for educators.

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) measures how well Year 4 and Year 8 students perform in maths and science. The latest study data from Australia compares student performance with the number of books in their home. Here, we look at how the number of books correlates with performance.

Why is language development so important in the early years? What does optimal language development look like? In this edition of Researching education: Five further readings, we share five resources which investigate the development of oral language in the early years.