•  On Jan, 20, 2023
•  Tutoring Primary

Closing the Gap Aboriginal children in remote parts of Australia are well below the national standards in education. Despite the objectives of “closing the gap” between First Peoples and the greater part of the Australian population over many years, we are failing. Can I say it in a kind way? Can we face the facts […]

•  On Jan, 08, 2023
•  Tutoring Primary

Teacher Shortage 2023 A problem has been brewing for many years. Increased student numbers; heavier teacher workloads; more administrative tasks and form-filling! The Education Departments around Australia heard but did nothing. There were lots of stats available to them about teachers’ sick leave, burnout, stress levels and resignations. Governments are good at stats but there […]

•  On Dec, 18, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Missed the Literacy Bus NAPLAN results for 2022 confirm the trend: for ten years literacy results indicate students have failed to progress between Grade 4 and Year 7. Australian schools are good at teaching early literacy. By Year 4, students can decode the text on the page; answer questions relating to the chronology of stories; […]

•  On Dec, 10, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Enquiry Learning Lacks Research Emeritus Professor John Sweller of UNSW questions the continuing extension of enquiry-based learning in the face of recent research findings about how humans learn. In https://www.cis.org.au/publication/why-inquiry-based-approaches-harm-students-learning/  Primary knowledge is what we humans learn through personal investigation. Secondary knowledge is what is passed down to us from earlier generations and through aeons […]

•  On Dec, 07, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Teaching Grammar is In On 22 September 2020 the Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled, “How does grammar help writing?” Changes in the New South Wales school curriculum are afoot to introduce the teaching of English grammar in explicit ways. It has always been there but lacks continuity into upper primary and secondary school […]

•  On Nov, 28, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Developmental Language Disorder Developmental Language Disorder, or DLD, is the subject of two recent research studies. Well reported on the internet including in The Conversation. The term replaces Specific Language Impairment. This change is found in the DSM-V (English) and does not necessarily apply to medical terms in all languages. DLD means a person has an […]

•  On Nov, 15, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Declutter the Classroom Classroom Clutter Can Confuse  The classroom clutter overhead, on every wall and every space harks back to earlier decades when Whole Language Theory dominated the teaching of literacy. Associated with Whole Language in the primary classroom was the idea of immersion in language and I think this remains one of the persistent remnants of that […]

•  On Nov, 15, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Dyslexic Child – The Alphabet   Explain to the child that Our alphabet has twenty six letters. And there are other alphabets that have more letters. As we only have twenty-six letters, fifty two if we include capital letters, we use them in combinations to create other sounds such as ‘th’ and ‘oa’. The letter […]

•  On Jul, 17, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

Work on the small letters first, then the capital letters. Starting with the lower case, work on letters with only straight lines…

•  On Jul, 17, 2022
•  Tutoring Primary

The positive effect of parents’ socio-economic standing (SES) is less than it used to be and the negative effect of staff turnover in larger primary schools is now greater.