1,721,002 research outputs found
Australian Children Catch the Bug: Motivating Young Children to Engage in Reading
No full textTwo Australian educators, Deputy Principal Jan Burton, and Head of Curriculum Jayne Barnett, saw themselves as being in the 'business' of working with teachers to increase students' literacy outcomes. Despite an intensive three year whole school literacy renewal project which focused on classroom pedagogies for teaching reading, the 'market' was still unmotivated. With a budget of less that US771), Jan and Jayne developed a 'business plan' to motivate their student and parent community to engage with reading: a plague of red and black 'reading' bugs. The slogan was 'Catch the Reading Bug', the icon was ubiquitous and the gimmicks were endless. The program's outcomes helped Thornlands State Primary School to win the Australian 'National Literacy and Numeracy Week Excellence Award for Schools 2006' as well as a smaller NLNW celebration grant. This article recounts their successful program
Review of B. Burnett, D. Meadmore & G. Tait (Eds) (2004) ‘Contemporary Questions’. Pearson Education, Australia: Sydney.
No full textLiteracy & Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005) advances an approach to multiliteracies education that has application from the middle years of schooling. Pahl & Rowsell add to the call for teachers & curriculum planners to build programs around local & individual difference as opposed to a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach. The authors argue that commonplace autonomous models of literacy dictate terms for the reader, whereas in an ideological model of literacy the reader & the context dictate the terms of how a text is read & understood. ‘Such a shift in thinking gives more power to the reader & the context as carriers of their own meanings, discourses & ideologies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005, p. 79). As Jim Cummins (2005, p. 151) summarises in the afterwords, Pahl & Rowsell provide a radically different image of the literacy student, an image that is intelligent, imaginative & linguistically talented. This text also outlines pedagogies & strategies for building on students’ individual cultural & linguistic capital, promoting cognitive engagement & identity investment where students are able to employ a range of technical tools to be constructors & researchers of knowledge. As Allan Luke argues in the foreword, such provision is essential if we are to abide by our commitment to literacy as a means of social transformation
Connecting communities - Contextualising literacies
No full textOver time, the Meanjin local council of ALEA, has been running a series of Key Teacher inservice days for teachers in the Brisbane and Ipswich area, and more recently further north in Yandina for Sunshine Coast teachers. Teachers who are ALEA members or whose schools are institutional members are able to attend up to three of these inservice days each year for a nominal cost. In the first part of this article Beryl Exley reviews the sessions presented on Friday 17 October, 2003 at Ipswich, a region mentored by ALEA Queensland State President, Nikki King. The sessions all dealt with the theme of connecting communities and contextualising literacies. In the second part Sandra Wright, a key teacher at Hatton Vale State School, details the experiences of her school’s attempt to connect with its community and to contextualise children’s multiple literacies
Ah! Now I see: the literacy demands of mathematics problems in the early years
No full textRecent research undertaken at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane explored the literacies of mathematics problems in the early years. Dr Beryl Exley, lecturer in language and literacy education, and Keiran Abel, a recent QUT graduand, used Halliday's (1990) functional grammar to analyse the literacies of mathematics problems in the early years. Their study was undertaken in two parts: firstly, an examination of six worded mathematical problems; and, secondly, an examination of the reading alternatives of the accompanying pictures
Grammar in the brain: Literacy knowledge for middle years visual arts teachers
No full textThis paper examines the literacy knowledge one teacher draws upon in a visual arts lesson on two-dimensional artefact appraisement with his middle years students. Transcriptions of video-taped extracts of the lesson’s introductory phase are presented and analysed. The analysis focuses on the part of the lesson where the teacher, Mr Brandt Ember, scaffolds the students through the elements and principles of visual design (QSCC, 2004, p. 52-53) framework. Whilst not using a grammatical metalanguage with the students, he consciously draws on his own understandings to identify the linguistic and grammatical complexity of the introductory tasks. Mr Ember assists the students to de-nominalise the framework terms by highlighting their material processes, that is, their action, so the students can more easily identify with them. Mr Ember also enters into a phase of modelling and joint construction with the students to use the framework to build the types of nominal groups the students will need when they undertake the written description task. The students’ responses to this phase of the lesson showcase the importance of Visual Arts teachers being highly skilled in appreciating, identifying and acting upon the unique linguistic demands of their subject area and for having pedagogies for teaching such
"Does violence breed violence?" and other sensitive and problematic themes: An upper primary multiliteracies project based on the award winning novel "Someone Like Me" by Elaine Forrestal
No full textThe range of activities presented here is designed to engage all students using a range of literacies, and provide a forum for their varying viewpoints on the themes of violence, schoolyard bullying, friendship, international terrorism, death and (dis)ability. The novel, ‘Someone Like Me’, written by Elaine Forrestal, is the stimulus resource rather than the focus of study. As with all of Forrestal’s work, readers will reach junctures where they are deeply affected by events, and perhaps confused by their complex moralities. You can pick and choose between the activities presented depending upon available time, students’ interests and hardware resources
Hearing silences: Aboriginal Australians using literacy to have a voice. Review of five IFTE 2003 Sessions
No full textWith the recent push for schools and teachers to play an active and positive role towards reconciliation between Australia’s traditional land owners and the more recent arrivals, it is more necessary than ever for teachers to better understand the multiple viewpoints and the complex issues that surround such a topic. IFTE 2003 provided many sessions where literacy teachers could hear from a diverse range of Aboriginal Australians. For me, such an opportunity was a crucial part of developing a better understandings about my role as a literacy teacher in these New Times. I have titled my review of five of these sessions as ‘Hearing Silences’. This was because IFTE 2003 provided a forum for Aboriginal Australians to talk about what literacy teachers should do for Aboriginal students in particular and for non-Aboriginal students in general
Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, grandparents and community members, welcome to the Wowan State Primary School Theatre Restaurant!
No full textIn recent years, the teaching staff from the Central Queensland school of Wowan State Primary School have been responding to recently released Education Queensland initiatives for whole school literacy planning, 'Literate Futures: Reading' (Education Queensland, 2002), and a framework for pedagogical reform, 'Productive Pedagogies' (Education Queensland, 2006). This article recounts one of their whole school showcase projects that exemplifies the innovative and connected ways this group of small school rural teachers are working to better students' engagement with the multiple demands of literacy in complex new times. Wowan State Primary School's 'Theatre Restaurant 2006' project was awarded a National Literacy & Numeracy Week Celebration Grant in 2006 for its effectiveness in creating real life literacy projects for its students and its connectedness to the wider community. This article also serves to contribute to the dearth of research on literacy in rural communities (Green & Reid, 2004; Reid, Edwards & Power, 2004) and correct myths that rural teachers are not highly skilled and fail to connect to their community (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2000; Clandinin & Connelly, 2004; Motley, Rossi & King, 2005) or that small multi-age rural schools do not provide exemplar practices worthy of national attention (see Sharplin, 2002; Jarzabkowski, 2003; Shelton, 2004)
Teachers' professional knowledge: Tensions within the accounts of offshore instruction
No full textThis paper comes from a larger study that seeks to develop understandings about the knowledge bases of eductors working in offshore contexts. In particular it focuses on interview accounts from teachers employed in Australian-owned institutions in Central Java, Indonesia. This paper highlights emerging tensions in these accounts as the teachers encounter multiple and sometimes conflicting expectations of the knowledge bases required of teachers in offshore instruction. Specifically the paper utilises Bernstein’s concept of pedagogic identities and his concept of classification alongside Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to theorise the construction of the multiple knowledge bases teachers require for a particular offshore education context
Languages of Communication : Indigenous language and/or English? \ud
No full textMy interest in producing this paper on Indigenous languages was borne out of conversations with and learnings from community members in the Torres Straits and those connected to the ‘Dream Circle’. Nakata (2003, p. 12) laments the situation whereby ‘teachers are transitionary and take their hard-earned knowledge with them when they leave’. I am thus responding to the call to add to the conversation in a productive albeit culturally loaded way. To re-iterate, I am neither Indigenous nor am I experienced in teaching and learning in these contexts. As problematic as these two points are, I am in many ways typical of the raft of inexperienced white Australian teachers assigned to positions in school contexts where Indigenous students are enrolled or in mainstream contexts with substantial populations of Indigenous students. By penning this article, it is neither my intention to contribute to the silencing of Indigenous educators or Indigenous communities. My intention is to articulate my teacherly reflections as they apply to the topic under discussion. \ud
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The remainder of this paper is presented in three sections. The next section provides a brief overview of the number of Indigenous people and Indigenous languages in Australia and the role of English as a language of communication. The section which follows draws on theorisations from second/additional language acquisition to overview three different schools of thought about the consequences of English in the lives of Indigenous Australians. The paper concludes by considering the tensions for inexperienced white Australian teachers caught up in the fray. \u
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