Article published in Practically Primary Vol 15 No 3, October 2010
Introduction: One of the most enduring and fascinating aspects of the English language is its ability to create new words. With some literary licence, I have created the word ‘grammart’ (grammar/art) as it encapsulates an ‘artfulness’ perspective for teaching grammar. The term ‘artfulness’ is derived from The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: English (2009, p. 16) and, for the purposes of this article, represents a perspective for the teaching of grammar in the early years. This article examines the teaching of grammar from an 'artfulness' perspective.

Article published in Literacy Learning: the Middle Years Vol 18 No 3, October 2010
Abstract: In this article, Hazel Edwards describes a novel collaboration, f2m; the boy within and the media blogging and reviews that followed the publishing of the novel. Co-author, Ryan Kennedy, lived as a female until his transition to male at 27 years of age. The novel is based on his experience of this transition. Recent sports media has focused on athletes who have transitioned gender and Hazel Edwards addresses issues for discussing the subject of transitioning gender through fiction and electronic media in middle year’s classrooms.

All teachers use a range of strategies to structure their teaching of English and literacy. This book describes and lists the steps for forty different teaching strategies that can help consolidate and extend every teacher's repertoire. The strategies can be adapted for all year levels and to suit different students' interests, knowledge and skills.

The ALEA STELLA professional learning project was set up to explore ways of using STELLA as a framework for Teachers' professional learning. In 2005 the project gave teachers in three Australian states an opportunity to work with a mentor to explore the STELLA professional standards, to develop their own professional learning, and to share their stories with other professionals. The teachers' stories in this collection are firmly based in classroom contexts, and tell about a variety of professional learning experiences that led to improved classroom outcomes.

Article published in Practically Primary Vol 15 No 3, October 2010
Introduction:  Throughout 2009 and continuing into 2010, my school participated in an action learning project offered by the University of Wollongong. The aim of this project was to help us add what we called a ‘forensic level’ to our understanding of the reading process. From the perspective of classroom teaching, this meant that only data meeting stringent, rigorous, scientific standards of accuracy and validity would be used to evaluate our students’ reading ability. From this, we would design subsequent instructional procedures to support our students’ needs. At a whole staff level we believed that if all teachers were collecting and using the same data, our analysis and subsequent interpretations would not only be easily transferable but would be consistent across teachers.

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ALEA posters now available! "Reading. YOU make the difference."

• Printed on strong laminated paper
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Large A2 - $3 each or 5 for $10 (inc. P & H)

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This publication presents some outcomes of a major professional learning project undertaken by ALEA in Tasmania. The project was organised to provide teachers with opportuities to design, monitor and implement research based on powerful, accessible ideas about reading comprehension in their own classrooms. Sixty teachers from across Tasmania participated in the project which began with two days of professional learning with Professor Peter Freebody and Professor Scott Paris. The teachers met together on six occasions throughout 2010.

Article published in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy Vol 33 No 3, October 2010
Abstract:  This collaborative teacher-research study was conducted in children’s first year of school and explored ways young children’s use of oral language, vocabulary  and phonology connected with beginning reading. A play-based oral language intervention was implemented and an analysis of oral language and reading suggested that spoken language did not provide a neat, sequential base which can be easily mapped to written language. Questions were raised about the view that oral language neatly underpins reading development and the study concluded that learning to read written English is influenced by children’s oral language development as well as their experience and understanding about written language structures.

Article published in Practically Primary Vol 15 No 3, October 2010
Introduction: The genre of narratives has become the genre of choice in many classrooms since the introduction of NAPLAN into Australian schools. Yet, Knapp and Watkins (2005) argue that narratives are theleast understood of all the genres. Despite widespreadacceptance that narratives serve the socialpurpose of entertaining, they can also be more edgy, offering a powerful social or informationrole. This paper considers the effects of exposing novices to less standard realms of social discourse and disciplinary knowledge vis-a-vis a more clinicaltreatment focused on ‘standard’ narratives. I argue that we should not shy away from the challenges of edgy narratives just because our students are novice readers. The same holds true for our work in communities on the edge, that is where poverty, multiculturalism or multilingualism and systemic failure are the norm. I am part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant (LP 0990289) working in such a community. Like many such situations, teachers in these communities are caught in the fray of stablishing a dialogue between the culture of federally mandated performance orientated reforms and the cultures and discourses of the lives and future needs of their students (see Exley & Singh, in press).