Archive for the ‘Literacy general’ Category

We recently published a group of four lesson guides to teach comparing and contrasting skills.

These stimulus picture prompts are designed to support and develop this critical comprehension skill for students at all year levels.

Signal words are embedded into each learning experience. These help students to:

state the relationships between ideas
embed the ideas in compound, complex or compound-complex sentences.

Sharks and Whales – new compare / contrast …

Tomorrow (20 July) the Literacy Teachers’ Academy opens its doors.  Just a reminder we’re running two free webinars, each also providing a short Q&A about the Academy.

Launch Discounts

Commence your membership before 25 July to enjoy a 50% discount on membership. Joining between 25 July to 4 August will gain you a 33% discount before pricing returns to normal.

Membership discounts are grandfathered, so joining on one of these discounts ensures …

Exciting news! We’re putting the final touches on a new venture created specifically to meet the challenges of teaching reading and writing in schools.

If you or your school are looking at a more comprehensive and efficient model to continue to learn and grow your teaching expertise, then things are about to get a lot easier. The brand new Literacy Teachers’s Academy (LTA) is launching in …

We recently published a group of 16 vocabulary ideas and games to the Literacy Solutions website.
These resources are freely available for use in classrooms and support students to ‘be on alert’ for focus words, whilst also practising and applying using target words in context.

Vocabulary Activities
Coming Soon

Whilst on the topic of great new resources, we have a big announcement coming very soon for those of …

For decades, if not centuries, academics, educators, politicians, and more recently, the public, have weighed in on the issue of how reading should be taught. Fuelled by the best of intentions, the virtues, and shortcomings of a phonic-centred, or phonological approach and a balanced literacy approach have been contested. Though the debate remains somewhat constant, erupting periodically and then simmering over time, it has re-ignited, …

Literature Circles webinar

Our recent free webinar, ‘Introduction to Literature Circles’, examines this powerful reading approach in which small discussion groups are comprised of students all choosing to read the same work of fiction.

Student discussions are guided by role cards or prompts which support students to think about the text in different ways and engage in meaningful conversations. As self-reliance develops, students become less reliant …

‘The Comprehension Toolkit (Ages 5-8)’. 82 reading lessons for busy teachers.

I’m very excited share some details about our upcoming book, The Comprehension Toolkit (Ages 5-8). The book is currently with our printer, but should be available in just a few weeks.

The Comprehension Toolkit (Ages 5-8) is a 240 page teacher workbook containing 82 lessons for busy teachers. The book is designed to assist teachers …

Cheerful Pens, Mastery Circuit, Sliding Cards, The Reading Wall, (Higher yield) Reading Stamina and Peer Tutoring

This is for those who’ve asked, formally and informally over the years. Our conversations have been short and often rushed. In workshops and consulting, the focus is on teaching or demonstrating the strategies, but time never permits a fuller explanation about where the ideas originated and what underpins them. As …

Hi All

I hope you’ve been well and enjoying a productive year. It’s been ages since I posted. As some of you know, our blog had been taken down. Thank you to Glenda who advised our blog had been spammed with inappropriate material. This has only just been resolved and we’re back in action. As a result, I have a number of entries from earlier this …

In problem/solution texts, the author presents a problem and one or more potential solutions. Only one significant problem and solution may be presented in simpler texts. In longer, more complex texts there may be one main or overarching problem, in addition to one or multiple smaller complications, all or most of which are usually resolved. Some texts feature multiple complications which together create one main …