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Tag Archives: classroom
Remembering C. A. (‘Dinger’) Bell
My English teacher in 1965, C.A. (‘Dinger’) Bell, was a man of few words, and I remember only four of them being addressed to me. “Not without merit, Shann,” he said one day as he handed back a piece of … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged C.A. ('Dinger') Bell, classroom, English, Melbourne Grammar School
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The mystery of learning to read
My colleague at the university and in our course on ‘Literacy across the curriculum, Associate Professor Kaye Lowe, has talked with our students about the essential mystery of how we learn to read. It’s often impossible to pinpoint what it … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, University classes
Tagged classroom, community, Cris Tovani, education, literacy, reading, teacher training, university
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Thoughts on ‘literacy across the curriculum’ from my students
The university course is now almost a fortnight old, and the 90 postgraduate students have all begun their blogs. The course is called “Literacy across the curriculum”, and the students have been writing about their current understanding of the term … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, University classes
Tagged classroom, community, education, learning, literacy, reading, teaching, thinking, university, writing
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Cris Tovani’s ‘Do I really have to teach reading?
This blog post is a bit different from all the others. The subject is Cris Tovani’s book Do I really have to teach reading?, the set text book for the postgraduate students doing my unit ‘Literacy across the curriculum’. The … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, University classes
Tagged assessment, classroom, Cris Tovani, education, Josh, literacy, questions, teacher training, texts, thinking, university, writing
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On the nature of literacy (with a nod to Spinoza)
In my last post, I suggested (following a lead inspired by Neil Postman) that we’re waging war on illiteracy. But this is wrong. We’re battling ignorance. Our enemy (at whatever level we teach and in whatever discipline we teach it) … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, University classes
Tagged Aristotle, Beauty, classroom, community, education, literacy, questions, reading, Spinoza, teacher training, teaching, thinking, Truth, university, writing
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Walking through the barrier: Josh Part 3
Preface In a month I’ll be teaching a postgraduate education unit called ‘Literacy across the curriculum’, and I’ll be asking each of the 90 students to report on a high school student’s reading. The project is described in more detail … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, My English classroom
Tagged classics, classroom, education, English, Josh, Karen LaBonte, learning, literacy, reading, school students, teacher training, thinking
5 Comments
Alex the parrot, Elizabeth Bennet and the soul’s code
As I read Maja Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics and followed the discussion about this book on the English Companion Ning, I kept thinking about a growing divide amongst teachers around the question of what we’re meant to be doing in the … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged Beauty, classics, classroom, EnglishCompanion, James Hillman, KarenLaBonte, MajaWilson, MichaelUmphrey, motivation, Ning, teaching, thinking, writing
9 Comments
Play the game!
Last Tuesday I walked into my Year 11 class in a rage. I was full of what my father once called ‘Steve’s white hot indignation’. I’d just read a number of comments on our class Ning that indicated that some … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged Alan Sitomer, assessment, classroom, community, curriculum, English, EnglishCompanion, Greg Thompson, learning, Ning, text culture value[s], thinking
7 Comments
What I think I know about reading
I have a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s linked, I think, with a sense that in these blog posts on reading I’m exposing myself, running the risk of looking foolish. This isn’t going to stop me, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged classroom, community, disorientation, EnglishCompanion, Josh, literacy, MajaWilson, reading, teacher training, university
2 Comments
A broken sleep
Last night I woke up at 3.17am. No, it must have been earlier than that, because I’d already been awake for while before I finally looked at the clock. Awake and worrying away at the thought that soon I’ll be … Continue reading
Posted in literacy, Pedagogy, Research, University classes
Tagged classroom, culture, curriculum, literacy, reading, teacher training, teaching, thinking, writing
5 Comments
Expectations, optimism and student performance
About an hour ago I was sitting with my 27 top set Year 10 English students. We’re studying satire, had just finished watching an Australian film called The Club and were talking about whether the students thought it was satire … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged classroom, English, satire, standards, student expectations
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My English classroom: challenging student stereotypes about satire
Our Year 10 satire course poses the question: ‘Should satire have an ethical intent?” It’s a bad question, I’ve come to realize, because it implies an option: that satire might have an ethical intent, or that it might not. I … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged classroom, education, English, Ning, satire, teaching
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First days in my English classroom: student disorientation
In response to my last blog in which I described my first English lesson with a new group of Year 10 students, Jim Burke recalled that the psalms charted a cycle in which we moved from Orientation to Disorientation (as … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom
Tagged classroom, disorientation, English, Ning, satire, school students
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What do the students want to know?
First day of the new school year today. First class, Year 10 English, a class of pretty switched on boys. We’re starting a semester-long unit on satire, and I’d prepared reasonably carefully: a unit plan outlining where we would go … Continue reading
Posted in My English classroom, Pedagogy
Tagged classroom, English, questions, satire, school students, student expectations, teaching
2 Comments
Birds fly, fish swim 