One of the challenges of teaching writing is that it can be challenging for children to see improvements day on day. They often zero in on surface features: spelling, the legibility of their script, punctuation as areas for improvement. One of the challenges for me as a teacher is to help the children catch that... Continue Reading →
Breaking Educational Moulds – cursive handwriting
Disclosure. I never earned my pen licence. My cursive script never reached the standard worthy of teacher approval to use permanent ink by the end of primary school. Despite many well-meaning interventions over the years, my handwriting is still awful. An ugly hybrid of three different scripts with poorly formed letters.Most of the Year 4... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: More than the sum of their academic parts
I have students. 29 of them to be exact. When people talk about raising class sizes as if just a couple of kids won't make much more of a difference I wonder if they have ever actually experienced what is like to mark and analyse the results of 29 students. Don't get me wrong I'm the sort... Continue Reading →
The right tools for writing?
At the moment I'm doing some nannying work for 3 boys. Boy B had a writing assignment for homework which he left to the last minute and was struggling to come up with something to turn in. His topic was to write a news report on Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall. Boy B had... Continue Reading →
Teaching the Teacher 