Podcast and Blog
Should I Go Rogue?
At one time or another, most teachers have gone rogue in their classrooms. We have been asked to do something that we don't want to do and thought, 'nope'. This doesn't impact things too badly when we've gone rogue about only 1 box of tissues from the office a time or not signing for that extra box of lead pencils, but it can have significant impacts when it comes to substantial areas of our teaching.
There are many reasons that teachers go rogue. They could…
How Many Feet Does Your School Have on the Bus?
This idea of the bus was something that occurred to me a few years ago. It was the idea that we're all moving in the same direction, that everybody is welcome and that we are part of a network of primary teachers and leaders committed to advocating for the right of every child to be t…
How do I know if resources are evidence aligned?
Here are the highlights from this episode:
Should we be using commercial programs to teach reading?
In our 2022 Teach Voice in Literacy Instruction Survey, a whopping 96.5% of teachers said that they wanted a program to guide them step by step through reading instruction
Your 8 Step Action Plan to Support Students Struggling with Fluency
At a certain point in a child's reading development we start the focus on fluency and one of the signs of a struggling reader is stilted, slow reading even after several years of reading instruction. The Australian Curriculum says that children should be ‘practising fluency’ from foundation the foundation year and ‘using fluency’ from year 1. I’m really sorry (ok, not sorry) but what on earth does that even mean? As teachers we are often left to our own devices to interpret what fluency act…
Signing off for 2022
To say that it has been a big year here at Jocelyn Seamer Education is an understatement! Over the past 12 months, I have:
- Submitted, finalised and released my first book with Routledge
- Delivered Teach Along courses to almost 1000 people
- Finished and released Reading Success in Action – Decoding 3
- Written around 50 blog posts
- Presented at 3 Sharing Best Practice conferences
- Met and had dinner with Linnea Ehri (eek, so exciting!) and presented at an event alongside her
- Directly support…
All I want for Christmas is an Evidence Informed Classroom
As we approach the end of the 2022 school year here in Australia, you may have the good fortune to be asked what resources you would like to order for 2023. If that's the case, here are my top suggestions for items that can support you in your quest to move towards a structured literacy classroom.
1) A subscription to the Resource Room. The Resource Room is the only online membership dedicated solely to structured literacy. Sure, morning teas are lovely, but if you really want to support your te…
Structured Literacy Requires Structured Planning
A quick peek at many a Facebook group just now will reveal that teachers are tired. Not just a little bit tired, but pooped, beat, spent and feeling plain old burnt out. Having just read that first sentence, you might then be wondering why I have decided to write about getting set up for the school year that hasn't even started yet. It's this simple. If you are anything like me, trying to rest and rejuvenate while the 'to do' list is swimming around in your head is a fool's errand. You lie down …
Why More Books about Teaching won’t Necessarily Make us Better Teachers
I love vegetable gardening. I love the excitement of seeing seeds germinate and little plants break through the soil. I love watching fruit and vegies grow and ripen to the point where they end up on our dining table. Over the years, I have bought many, many gardening books. I have a whole back catalogue of Grass Roots magazines as well as a book on square metre gardening, backyard self-sufficiency, growing vegetables in tropical climates (when I lived in the tropics), growing vegetables in a co…
Text Based Units in a Multi-age Classroom
For most of my teaching life, I have taught in multi-age and composite classrooms. I was once the lone teacher in a little school where I had pre-school to year 5 in the one room! While all teachers have a range of ‘levels’ in their classroom, multi-age/multi-grade teachers, have a special situation to contend with. Not only do they need to meet students where they are up to in building foundational skills, but they need to meet a range of learning outcomes as outlined by the curriculum. When it…