Education News
Parent Information Session:
Writing and Reading
This year MPW has been fortunate to secure the services of Literacy Consultant, Lorraine Wilson. Lorraine’s work and approach to teaching and learning very much compliments the school’s Teaching and Learning Philosophy.
Lorraine is an author of many children’s books as well as teaching resources such as; Teaching Phonics in Context - L. Wilson and D. Hornsby, Writing to Live and Reading to Live. She is also a respected literacy consultant, recognised for many achievements such as:
- ALEA Medal, awarded by the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association, 1996
- The 2004 Service Award, presented by the Whole Language Umbrella, USA.
- The ALEA Citation of Merit Award for Literacy – The Garth Boomer Award- awarded by the Australian Literacy Educators Association, 2005
- Life Time Membership Award, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English, USA, 2011.
In first term, Lorraine has been working mostly with the P/1 team and she will continue to work with our teaching staff across the school in term two. During these sessions, Lorraine demonstrates good practice in the teaching of English. Areas that have been covered so far are; personal writing-including conferencing, publishing, ideas, spelling, punctuation and genre, modelled writing, shared writing, shared literature, language experience, dialogue, monologue, conversation and innovation.
Some of the areas that will be covered in term two include; poetry, oral language, speaking and listening and debating… just to name a few.
The teaching and learning of English is complex and Moonee Ponds West is very lucky to have Lorraine supporting our staff to consolidate and embed a whole school pedagogy and learning framework, which has an agreed language and is evident through consistent practice.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite our families to two information sessions, one about writing and one about reading, which will be held in the performance space.
- Parent Information about writing Monday 1st May at 09:30-10:30
- Parent Information about reading Monday 8th May at 09:30-10:30
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide childcare for either of these information sessions so we ask that you make other arrangements if care is required.
Please complete the below form and return to the office by Thursday 27th April.
Room 7
Room 7 are learning about the importance of Word Choice in their writing. Word Choice is one of the 6 Traits of Writing students at MPW learn about in both personal and directed writing, and as the students discovered, the use of interesting words can turn a mundane sentence into an interesting one.
The students were given this sentence:
The cat sat on the mat.
Here are their writing samples:
The super cat sat cheerfully on the fancy mat.
The royal cat sat proudly on the fancy mat.
The adorable cat lay asleep on the comfortable mat.
The proud cat cheerfully on the royal mat.
The cute cat sat cheerfully on the emoji mat.
The dirty cat sat on the beautiful mat.
The ginger cat sat happily on the colourful mat.
The French sat on the fancy red mat.
The wonderful cat sat on the e-shaped mat.
The fancy sat happily on the blue mat.
The silly cat sat sleepily on the explosive mat.
The blue sat proudly on the cool mat.
The royal sat cheerfully on the beautifully fancy mat.
The smart cat sat on the awesome cool red and green mat.
The cute French cat sat amazed on the fashionable mat.
The wet cat sat cheerfully on the royal Christmas mat.
The glorious and beautiful cat sat proudly on the beautiful mat.
The cute fashionable cat sat cheerfully on the royal mat.
The robot cat sat proudly on the robotic mat.
Critical literacy
Critical literacy has again become topical.
In educating children in this age of fake news, alternative facts and an ever burgeoning supply of information,
It's not just about keeping them safe from predators, cyberbullies, porn and identity theft: it's also about having an ethical framework, and the skills to assess the reliability of information.
In an effort to encourage schools to refocus on critical thinking, that is: how to question and assess the reliability of information, next year PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] will commence assessing not only maths, science and reading skills, but a suite of global competencies including children’s attitudes to global issues, cultures, and analytical and critical skills.