•  On Feb, 13, 2024
•  Tarwala1

Science in Time-Short Classrooms Simple Ways Science in Time-Short Classrooms has some ideas that are workable for busy teachers. It combines the science context with literacy lessons. Also, parents can follow these simple principles when teaching their own children in the home setting. 1 — A set reading piece on a science topic provides children […]

•  On Feb, 13, 2024
•  Tarwala1

Grattan Institute Education Nonsense Dr Jordana Hunter has a PhD — but not in Education.  Hunter’s areas of study are in Social and Political Science, Law and Commerce. She is one of the authors of the Grattan Institute Education Guarantee Report released in February 2024. Anika Stobart, the co-author, has first degrees in law and […]

•  On Sep, 08, 2023
•  Tarwala1

Autism and Schools Autism and Schools concern parents and teachers!  How children with a Level 1 diagnosis are taught is of special concern. While the DSM-V removed Asperger’s Syndrome as a separate diagnosis, it includes it on the Autism Spectrum. It replaces Asperger’s with the name, Level 1 Autism, but the diagnostic descriptors are the […]

•  On Apr, 14, 2023
•  Tarwala1

Some Children Can’t Write Some Children Can’t Write but they can improve! Links:  Upper Primary School, Page, Middle Primary School, Page , Early Primary School, Page, Early Secondary School, Page.  These pages give an overview of Tutoring Primary and many links to items for purchase. What affects people’s ability to write? This question includes “what affects children’s ability […]

•  On Apr, 13, 2023
•  Tarwala1

Workforce Crisis One in five workers “lack adequate literacy skills” so said Greg Jericho from the Centre for Future Work, 13 April 2023 on ABC News radio.  A link here to a more recent discussion of this: Grattan Institute Education Nonsense, (February 2024). If you can’t write properly or read well enough, take heart.  Help your […]

•  On Dec, 18, 2022
•  Tarwala1

NAPLAN Results 2022 NAPLAN Results 2022 confirm the trend: for ten years literacy results indicate students are not moving forward 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; >find explicit […]

•  On Dec, 10, 2022
•  Tarwala1

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/  Three earlier posts published since 2018 from a hands-on knowledge of enquiry tasks in schools.   Enquiry Learning Needs Overhaul, Post        Enquiry Tasks Have […]

•  On Dec, 07, 2022
•  Tarwala1

Teaching Grammar is Back  Teaching Grammar is Back and word has got around! 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 […]

•  On Nov, 15, 2022
•  Tarwala1

Clear Classroom Clutter Clear Classroom Clutter!   Classroom clutter confuses especially weaker students. Now there’s a run of  Cs for you!  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 […]

•  On Nov, 15, 2022
•  Tarwala1

Dyslexia and Early Literacy Dyslexia and Early Literacy offers hints on how to improve the teaching of dyslexic students. Explain to the student 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 […]