Month: August 2017
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Using the correct terminology – Teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives
(An abridged extract from Yarning Strong Professional Support Years 3-4) Language and individual words gain their meaning from a particular context or the perspective of the observer. Within the Australian historical context, some terms used to describe past events are value-laden and need to be understood in context. For example, terms such as ‘discovery’, ‘pioneers’…
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Primary students show age is no barrier to creativity
There was a stubborn dog and a deadly beast, a new student in the class and a sleepy language-lover – the entries in the 2016 Wordlist Writing Competition for primary school students showed some wonderful creativity and originality. In the lead up to National Literacy and Numeracy Week between September 4 and 10, we’re looking…
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Brad Gobby and Rebecca Walker discuss Powers of Curriculum
Curriculum as the entirety of learners’ experience in an educational setting. Powers of Curriculum explores education in Australia today through the notion and practices of curriculum. It broadens our conception of curriculum to include the lived experiences of learners in educational settings. It also explores historical and current forces within and beyond education that constitute…
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Making the dictionary ‘fair dinkum’
As a primary school student in the mid-1980s one of my favourite in-class games was the ‘Dictionary Game’. Mr Brenchly would read out the definition from a word in our school dictionary and we would be asked to find the word that was being defined in our copy of the dictionary. There is one word…
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Celebrating Father’s Day with the ‘dad joke’
It appears that dad jokes are having a moment. Some of the coolest fathers on the planet are airing their own dad jokes, and some decidedly less cool dads are following suit. The dad joke is described by OxfordDictionaries.com as, ‘An unoriginal or unfunny joke of a type supposedly told by middle-aged or older men.’…
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Lost without atlas skills
By Annie Facchinetti The digital native, tech savvy students in our classrooms today have no need for traditional skills such as knowing how to use an atlas or to read a map, right? They’ll just use Google to get fast information about places or to find their way around. While it’s tempting to think that…
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More than Mercutio – English teaching for the future
By Michael Horne Discussion of what teachers and educational leaders really want students to get out of their schooling has recently shifted to the types of skills that they will need in the 21st century. In the face of a paradigm that still emphasises knowledge retention and memorisation, and when viewed in combination with the…
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Oxford Word of the Month: August – honey joy
noun: a honey-flavoured biscuit containing cornflakes. THE STORY BEHIND THE WORD OF THE MONTH In 1938 a simple recipe for a crisp honey-flavoured biscuit appeared in a Victorian newspaper: Honey Joys … Five cups cornflakes, 3 dessert-spoons butter, 2 table-spoons castor sugar, 1 table-spoon honey. Melt butter, sugar, and honey; mix in the cornflakes, put into…