Kia ora tatou You will all be back at school now after what I hope was a great Easter break. I, however, am in Sweden deeply ensconced in my work for Stockholm University. I have been here since March 20 and will be home at the end of May. I’m teaching courses about struggling writers, delivering public lectures on the same, … Read More
Kia ora tatou Happy New Year to all of you. I must say that I was happy to see the end of 2022. Although Covid only interrupted my plans in Term One (badly!!), it hung over us for all of the year. I caught it in March (though only mildly) but spent the rest of the year wondering when I … Read More
AUGUST 2023 – JANUARY 2024 The past six months have been very hectic for me – finishing off the school year and getting my own book ready for publication – but I have managed to do a considerable amount of reading and viewing. READING I have read 18 works of fiction over the past six months and (as usual) they … Read More
Part of this time was spend in Europe; part was spent back in New Zealand. Because life in both locations has been absolutely hectic, I have not been able to read or view as much as I normally would in a three-month period. Hence 9 novels only, and a small amount of theatre going. Mind you, quantity doesn’t align with … Read More
The past three months have been a glorious opportunity for reading and viewing and have I taken advantage of them!! BOOKS I have read 9 works of fiction over the past three months and they have been a mixture of ‘the very best of the year’ and (predictably) a few books that haven’t engaged me so much. In order of … Read More
Tessa Clarke, a very enthusiastic teacher of literacy, teaches a delightful Year 7-8 class at Drury School on the outskirts of Auckland. A few months back, Tessa came across a picture book that she loved (Where Are You From? by Yamile Saied Mendez) and decided to develop a writing activity from it. This is what she did. She began by … Read More
Toward the end of last year (2022), Erin Neilson (a senior teacher of a Year 4 class at Selwyn Ridge School, Tauranga) contacted me because she was very excited about writing produced by three of her lads (James, Jedd and Liam). She described these lads as “boys who always struggled with writing, didn’t like it, thought it was boring, handwriting … Read More
Watching me using Anthony Browne’s wonderful picture book Voices in the Park as a catalyst for character writing, Sue Fennell (a teacher of Year 5 students at Lower Hutt’s Eastern Hutt School) was inspired to use the text as a way into diary writing by her students. Sue loved the book; she assumed her students would love it as well … Read More
Ja migrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand from Myanmar as small child. She attends school in South Auckland as a Year 6 student and has worked hard at attaining both proficiency and fluency in English as a speaker, reader and writer. I came across Ja as a writer when I was analysing student texts with her teacher Mary, as part of Mary’s … Read More
Earlier in 2022 I was in Robert Raynes’ Year 7-8 class in Howick Intermediate (a decile 9 school in Howick, Auckland) when I noticed some very attractive and interesting student texts hanging from the ceiling. I asked Robert (a provisionally registered teacher) what they were about and he introduced me to a picture book called My Shadow is Pink by … Read More