Communication and Mental Health

The talk at school today was on Communication and Mental Health by Natasha Devon. It was the first time I’ve heard her speak and she is an excellent speaker. I highly recommend hearing her talk if you ever get the chance to. I really wish I’d gone in with a tape recorder because she didn’t

Helping Children Manage Anxiety

With camp around the corner, G1’s anxiety levels are at an all-time high. It was pretty good timing that our school ran a workshop on anxiety and learning to manage it. These are my notes from the workshop (with annotations)… Defining Anxiety Anxiety is defined as “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something

The Accelerated Reader Programme

It’s been a while since I read that article in Education by Numbers that stated: mindlessly reading book after book does not benefit children very much it is comprehension that is the key to learning gains In fact, a voracious reader who understands less than 65% of the content in the books he reads is no better

Learner Skills for Kids in the 21st Century

For our children be successful when they get out into the real world, they will need more than a report card with good grades. They will need a number of intangible skills that we often refer to as “soft skills” or “21st century skills”. At our school, we call them “learner skills”. To help us

Adventure Learning – How Experiential Learning Empowers Your Child

Adventure Learning is an approach used to design online and hybrid education that provides students with opportunities to investigate and experience authentic topics within collaborative learning environments. – Veletsianos, G. (2012) Adventure learning is a form of education that takes place outdoors in the form of an adventure. It is usualy set in a location that

Reciprocal Reading – How to Support Your Child with Reading

Reading with children is important and this is something parents are encouraged to do quite often to support the children at school. In the early years, it’s just about learning to read and understanding the reading code. As the children advance into upper primary, they start moving into something called Reciprocal Reading. What is Reciprocal

Talk for Writing – How to Support Your Child with Reading and Writing

The Word Gap The Word Gap refers to the startling findings from the groundbreaking study by University of Kansas researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, titled “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3“. By 3 years of age, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families.

Maths Mastery – Transforming Maths Education

There’s this new method of teaching Maths at school that we’re learning about called Maths Mastery. I think the first question that often comes up whenever there is a change is this: why the new system? What was wrong with the old way of doing things and why do we need to change it? And

Story-Based Education for Engaging Student Learning

G2 came home recently and told me that his classroom had been trashed by a troll who came in the middle of the night. If I hadn’t been pre-warned by a teacher from school, I probably would have thought he was telling porky pies. And who could’ve blamed me? It sounded like a scene out

Enquiry Learning – Raising the Next Generation of Problem Solvers

There is a subject at school that the kids do which is called “enquiry learning”. It’s another term I’ve heard floating around but never deeply understood what it meant in the context of learning at school. Sure, I understand what “enquiry” means – it’s asking questions. It conjures the image of a science class where