This past week has been a feast of professional development, school visits, and shared insights from some of the best educators in (and outside) the country. Each day offered an opportunity to deepen my understanding of what great teaching looks like and how schools can refine their practice to serve students more effectively. Conferences notebook […]
Refining Practice: A Week of Learning and Inspiration Read More »
Do you wear a T-shirt sometimes? How about jeans? Tracksuit pants? Slip-on shoes? A hat that doesn’t fasten under your chin? How lazy! Those lazy clothes, and many more besides are the curse of civilization. We are losing so many clothes that take effort to wear. I’m calling for a return to corsets, collared shirts,
Stop Wearing Lazy Clothes! Read More »
Since I wrote Language for Life in 2013, more than a decade has passed, and in that decade, I’ve learned a great deal. The new edition reflects that learning in the following ways: The first edition was written as a kind of download of everything I knew about grammar and syntax in a way that
Language for Life Edition 2: Some changes Read More »
patch – a piece of cloth or other material used to mend or strengthen a torn or weak point (OED, my emphasis) Here’s a weak point in teacher knowledge that crops up frequently: Q. “Can someone please explain why letter X in word X does this but letter X in word Y doesn’t?” If you, or someone you work
The Spelling Patch: A cautionary tale for educators Read More »
It’s a pyjama day today. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “It’s always a pyjama day for Lyn!”. Well, in spirit, yes, yes it is, but today, I’m participating in the flesh too. The reason for this is I’m having a good rest after a very fruitful, very busy week. I have spent the last
Pressing the Reset Button on Spelling Read More »
A re-enactment of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ 30 years ago I lived to tell the tale. July 4th is always a special day for me. Apart from the thought of lovely fireworks across America, it also marks the anniversary of my arrival in Australia. This year, it’s a big one. Thirty years have passed since I
30 Years: Looking forward, looking back Read More »
Today’s word is ‘receive’. It comes up almost every time I ask a room of people about difficult words. It’s almost always taught alone as part of some list or other in some kind of spelling sequence, but again, if you look under the bonnet and see what drives this word and other words like
Speech to Print Solutions: Receive Read More »
Here’s one of my favourites: necessary. My approach was once to come up with a cute memory trick like the ones you see on YouTube, but back then, I wasn’t in the habit of lifting up the bonnet on words like I am now. This made my teaching a bit hit and miss. I want
When high quality teaching is ‘necessary’, S2P won’t help Read More »
Today’s Speech to Print and other dubious practices solution centres around the word ‘was’. Since my first article on the S2P movement, there have been a great number of comments from S2P practitioners along the lines of ‘Oh we absolutely teach morphology and etymology…after second grade/after the initial code/CCVCC’ etc. When I ask: Why wait?
Speech to Print Solutions: ‘was’ Read More »
Today’s popular words are ‘said’ and ‘their’. Guaranteed to come up whenever you ask a room of teachers about tricky words. Use the irregular words to tell the stories of the language. They aren’t irregular for a laugh. Each time you encounter one, you stand at a fork in the road. You can either gloss
Speech to Print Solutions: said and there (and Robert Frost) Read More »