A million years ago when I was on my first practicum at Cornwall Park Primary School in Auckland, I was lucky enough to see Jill Eggleton take a few of their staff meetings about literacy. And that was when I fell in love with her and her literacy approach. As literacy leader at a previous school, I ordered a lot of her books for the students as they have strong language and engage the kids.
Recently I have been talking with a junior teacher at our school who is doing a masters in literacy and she reminded me about Jill's book Lighting the Literacy Fire . I had read the first version of this book ages ago when I was still at teachers college so it was about time that I read the new version again, particularly because I am changing to a year level I haven't taught in years.
I actually got a lot more out of it then I thought I would. It basically tells you how to set up your literacy programme to ensure that you have a good oral language programme, writing programme and reading programme. Of course I was doing a lot of these things already but there were things that I was reminded about - like the current events shared reading (I am totally doing that next year).
The writing programme chapter had some good tips about 'writing with' students so I have recorded some ideas that I would like to implement next year and that I will hopefully blog about on here then.
This book is definately worth a read or a re-read. I got a lot out of it and I can see how all of the Jill Eggleton reading resources tie in to her approach. We have her resources in the school so I am looking forward to using them with my new year 4 class.
At teachers college (Auckland College of Education) I remember watching this clip (or video as it would have been back then) and I was in awe of this child-centred approach to education. It helped me form part of my own teaching philosophy.
As I reflect on where we are going with education in New Zealand, it is with great sadness that we are heading back towards such a prescriptive curriculum and away from Elwyn Richardson's idea that learning should be child-centred. Richardson's approach to education involved an integrated curriculum, values education, inquiry learning, philosophy, te reo Māori and creative thinking. He used the local environement and what was important to the children as his context for teaching.
Education is changing in New Zealand but I believe we need to ensure that we put the child at the centre and do what is best for them, not force them to meet standards that they may or may not be ready to meet.
I would love to buy a copy of his book The Early World . If I'm honest with myself, in the last few years I have moved away from a child-centred approach mainly due to time constraints and expectations that have been placed on us by National Standards. My goal for next year is to bring this approach back into my classroom so that my practice reflects my own beliefs about teaching.
