Author: Leon Furze
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Guest Post: Ashleigh Cavalin – Practical Reading Strategies for Romeo & Juliet
Now that Practical Reading Strategies has been out in the wild for a few months, I’ve started to receive feedback from teachers around how they’re using the book in their classrooms. This post is courtesy of Ashleigh Cavalin at Kilvington Grammar School. Ashleigh has taken PRS and adapted the activities to target her audience of young male […]
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I, Writerbot: Critical Literacy in an Age of Machine Authors
This is the second post on the topic of AI writers. For the first post, on the nature and purpose of essay writing when AI can write almost as well as our students, click here 👇 Critical Literacy and Digital Texts Critical literacy is an essential skill, both in the English classroom and beyond. It […]
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VCE English Crafting Texts Mentor Collection
To support teachers with the first year of the new Crafting Texts Area of Study in Unit 1 English, I’ve put together this collection of 12 texts from a variety of fiction and nonfiction forms around the idea of ‘Futures’. According to the new VCE English and EAL Study Design, “The mentor texts can include […]
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Guest Post: Fiona Simmonds – Practical Reading Strategies and Design Thinking
Now that Practical Reading Strategies has been out in the wild for a few months, I’ve started to receive feedback from teachers around how they’re using the book in their classrooms. This post is courtesy of Fiona Simmonds at Port Melbourne Secondary College. Fiona has used many of the activities in PRS in her classes. […]
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Planning for the 2023 VCE English/EAL Study Design
Update: Since writing these original posts VCAA have released even more advice about assessment. I’m adding my recent posts on comparative judgement and how to assess the VCE Crafting and Creating Texts outcomes below. I’ve also added the ‘Teachers as Writers’ series of posts because the new Crafting and Creating Texts units are going to […]
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Essays? AI in the English Classroom
Rise of the Machines The term artificial intelligence was coined as early as 1956, at a conference in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. After a brief flurry of activity, government interest – and funding – dropped off dramatically until the 1980s, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that IBM’s Deep Blue caught the public eye when […]
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Creating a Culture of Reading
When I wrote Practical Reading Strategies I focused the entire first half of the book on providing instantly usable activities that a teacher could pick up and take into the classroom, adopting and extending them to suit their own students. But in the second half of the book, things get a little more philosophical, and […]
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VCE English as an Additional Language (EAL) 2023
With between 3000-4000 students completing Unit 3 & 4 EAL each year, many schools will be adopting the upcoming 2023 EAL curriculum. The volume of students completing the EAL curriculum means it warrants plenty of attention in the upcoming update of the Study Design. Also, with around 400 schools in Victoria having a mix of […]
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VCE English and EAL 2023: Exploring Argument
This is the fifth in a series of posts on the upcoming 2023 VCE English and EAL Study Design. For the first four posts, see the links at the end. In the current Study Design, Analysing and Presenting Argument (APA) dominates 50% of the outcomes for Units 1 and 2. In Unit 1 “students focus […]
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VCE English 2023: Mentor Texts and Ideas
This is the fourth in a series of posts on the upcoming 2023 VCE English and EAL Study Design. For the first three posts, see the links at the end. Mentor Texts In the new Study Design mentor texts are “Texts to be read and re-read as models of effective and cohesive writing.” They are […]
Leon Furze 