Nicola Blight’s Year 1 classroom at Newton Central School (a multi-cultural inner Auckland school) is a wonderfully creative and vibrant space in which colour, movement, shape and wonderings abound. Nicola – who has been teaching for more than 20 years – continually seeks artifacts and experiences that will challenge her students, deepen their natural curiosity and enable them to express … Read More
Kia ora koutou katoa I do hope that you are doing OK out there in lock-down. We have had several enquiries on how to share videos with students. As a result of the lockdown, we have decided to make some of the videos easier to share with your tamariki. About Working With Video Lessons As a general rule, we recommend … Read More
One of the picture books I use for story writing in my on-line subscription resource (Building Excitement, Engagement and Achievement in Writing with Dr Murray Gadd is Handa’s Hen by Eileen Browne Set in a village in Kenya, it is the story of Handa and her friend Akeyo searching for Handa’s grandmother’s lost hen and it outlines what they discover … Read More
Kia ora tatou, Hope you all had a great break – though it probably seems ages ago now – and that the weather and/or the trans-Tasman bubble breaking didn’t interrupt your plans too much. The purpose of this update is to inform you of what’s new on the website – both free and paid resources – and to catch you … Read More
2020 was a tough year for all of us, given the two lock-downs that Auckland educators faced during the year as well as the abandonment of overseas travel. But I finished it nicely. I’m just completing six weeks of relaxing (mainly at home), reading, swimming, walking and a little bit of socialising. I hope your break has been good as … Read More
I’m beginning this Arts review with my reading journey that included three of the novels short-listed for the 2021 International Booker Prize – two translated into English from French and one from Spanish. Subsequently, I read another seven novels from around the world: three from America, one from the UK, one from Egypt, one from Barbados and one from across … Read More
As usual, I’ve read a diverse range of books, watched a number of movies and seen some wonderful plays over the past few months, taking me to all corners of the world. One of the reasons I love all of these stories is because they introduce me to ideas and take me into places and characters I would never normally … Read More
At the end of my last Arts Update (August 2020), I was part way through reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and about to start David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue. I would highly recommend both of these novels, but especially Hamnet. Set in seventeenth-century Warwickshire (England), Hamnet is a beautifully written fictionalisation of the ups and downs of William Shakespeare’s family and particularly … Read More
Taylor McGrath is in his third year of teaching and works at Howick Intermediate which is a medium-sized decile 4 school in East Auckland. He is currently working with a diverse group of 30 students from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The Love of Writing & Music Taylor loves teaching writing and he loves listening to contemporary music. … Read More
I had the pleasure of working at Raroa Normal Intermediate (in Johnsonville, Wellington) for two days at the end of last term, modelling good practice in classrooms. At the end of my second day, one of the teams (Whai Wahi, led by Ethan Porteous) invited me to an after-school display in the hall that they had put together based on … Read More