Teaching students about text types won’t – on its own – make them good writers
For a long time, in Australia and elsewhere, the writing curriculum has been shaped by the ideas of linguist Michael Halliday, who developed “systemic functional…
Why I teach reluctant writers about high-frequency prefixes, suffixes and bases
With thanks to Wood, Garcia-Salas, Schatschneider, and Torres-Chavarro (2024), here’s why I teach reluctant writers about high-frequency prefixes, suffixes, and bases: We can increase students’…
Learning to handwrite fluently gives your child a big advantage
Some people think that handwriting is out-moded, like a horse-drawn carriage, rotary-dial phone, or fax machine. Like many males, I copped a lot of flak…
How I teach the extended code
Once beginners have learned the basics of word reading (basic code, blending and segmenting, short vowel spotting, inflectional morphemes, split vowel digraphs, vowel-and affix-based strategies…
Banter Booster: DSF Conference Free Resource Edition
I’ve just arrived home from the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation (DSF) Literacy, Language and Learning Conference in Perth. It was amazing. So many generous speakers sharing so…