Tag: student-centred
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Pulling it all together
This is the sixth in a series of posts related to the six Strategies covered in my book Practical Reading Strategies. You can buy a copy of the book here. Check out the previous four posts on Making Connections, Visualising, Questioning, Inferring and Summarising. Synthesising is the final of the six Reading Strategies. As I…
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In your own words
This is the fifth in a series of posts related to the six Strategies covered in my book Practical Reading Strategies. You can buy a copy of the book here. Check out the previous four posts on Making Connections, Visualising, Questioning, and Inferring. Summarising involves recalling the main events or ideas from a text. The…
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Activity spotlight: One minutes, three minutes, five minutes, write!
This is a great activity for encouraging students to do more than just glance at a text before trying to write a response, or answer a direct question. A lot of the time, our students want to rush ahead and just, “get the job done,” when we really want them to provide a thoughtful response.…
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Activity Spotlight: Text Walk
The Text Walk, also known as a chalk talk, is one of the foundational activities in our English classrooms. It serves as the basis for many of our other activities, and a springboard for discussion. Most importantly, the text walk is a means of getting students to engage with short extracts of texts for themselves,…
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Where Close Reading Meets Reader Response
Close reading is the cornerstone of an English curriculum. Not only does it offer an opportunity for student voice and interpretation, but it is also a platform for academic rigour and analysis. In the right hands, the close reading of limited excerpts of a text can be much more powerful than a superficial reading of…
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You’re doing coursework wrong: Why SACs are not exams
This post refers to the current 2016-2022 Study Design for Unit 3 and 4 VCE English. SACs are not examinations. Sounds obvious, but in my experience, School Assessed Coursework in English (and most other curriculum areas) is treated as a pared back version of the end-of-year examination. In fact, it’s so rare to find any…
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The Value of Close Reading
Close reading should be about the student, not the teacher. When guiding becomes telling, it’s time to hand over the reins.
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An English curriculum that matters
An English curriculum that matters doesn’t have to neglect the classics. You can have both relevance and rigour, creating a curriculum that everyone enjoys.