What are the building blocks of making meaning? They transform ‘sensory input’ into language through gestures & movement, visuals, sounds and texts to express our experiences, feelings, values and beliefs.
How does cognitive science add to our understanding of role play in teaching and learning? What does it tell us about to most effectively use it in classroom contexts?
The relationship between teaching and learning often dealt with polemically: in black and white OR as indeterminable. How does a classroom teacher figure it out?
There would be little disagreement on the importance of broadening and deepening the vocabulary of young people. In the preface to Teaching effective vocabulary , the 2008 Chief Adviser on School Standards in the UK, Sue Hackman, compares having a good vocabulary to ‘an artist’s palette of colours’. Vocabulary is more than a list of words, and … Read more
Have you ever viewed the fairytale spoof The Princess Bride (1987)? It’s a film determined to make us laugh about our ‘happy ever after’ delusions. One of my favourite moments is when the heroine, Princess Buttercup, chastises the returning hero, Westley, disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts, for mocking her pain; he answers, “Life is … Read more
I modified the persuasive devises worksheet to include the historically important advertisements that, arguably, have influenced Australian culture.
The 1998 primary arts publication I worked on, which brought together a number of cross-curricular arts project for primary schools, is pictured on the right. As the resource was commissioned by five arts education associations, it was my role as chair of the joint committee to oversee the collection of exemplars of arts projects in … Read more
We all have unique stories about how we became teachers. In my case, I became a teacher, then left, and fifteen years later, I realised just how much I loved it. Now, three years later, I have stories of surviving COVID and starting from scratch… though the second time around, it has held many surprises … Read more
The inception of The Economist in 1843 to protest against the Corn Laws in the UK makes an interesting case to frame a media ethos for a weekly newspaper that continues to espouse a liberal philosophy. The class examined two years’ worth of front images and one story to discuss the purpose, audience and contention … Read more