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Guest Article by Tracey Hand of Optimise Learning. Co-founder of Optimise Learning, Tracey Hand, is a former teaching colleague and she is one of the most outstanding teachers I have ever seen in a classroom. In fact I respect her wisdom on all things reading so very much that I…
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Recently I was asked to be a part of The Groundswell Project Dying to Know Day 2020 campaign. Dying To Know Day (August 8th) is an annual day of action dedicated to activating conversations and community actions around death, dying and bereavement. The webinar Young people and Grief | Activating…
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ChickPea is NINE! It seems like just yesterday we were having her first birthday party, a ‘Bad Tempered Ladybird Party’ because she screamed with reflux pain for the first year of her life! Then she had a Wild Things Party at two and a Stomping Dinosaur Party at three ……
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You’ll know, if you’ve been reading my musings for a while now, that I often talk about the wonders of audio books and podcasts – especially for car rides. For more on the power of audio books see Chapter 9 of my book ‘Raising Readers’. As an educator, I’m going…
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A few short weeks ago, author Allison Rushby, a member of the Your Kid’s Next Read admin team, mentioned she was about to start reading Thomas Taylor’s ‘Gargantis’. Well. What a flurry of excitement there was! There were definitely a lot of people in the YKNR community who’d adored ‘Malamander’…
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June is Pride month for the LGBTGI+ community and across the world the community celebrates in all manner of different ways. I celebrate most occasions with books (and cake), so I’m celebrating Pride month with 50+ books which I believe are important additions to your home and school libraries. Diverse…
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Books are one of the best ways I know for children to learn about nature, issues of the environment, and sustainability in general. While there is much to be said about learning and exploring in nature, there is also much to be gained from exploring words, images and ideas in worthy non-fiction…
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Isn’t it lovely when you meet a ‘celebrity’ in real life and they are exactly as you imagined them? ChickPea and I were fortunate enough to meet Costa Georgiadis, host of ABC’s ‘Gardening Australia’ and the garden gnome on ‘Get Grubby TV’, when he came to my mum’s school recently.…
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Books which inspire young people to dream big and aim high with sport are always going to capture attention, and so it is with ‘Victress’ – a truly beautiful collection of stories and images about 35 female sporting identities which will serve as inspiration for young readers and sporting fans…
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With the weather cooling, and with more time spent at home right now, it is the perfect time to get out in the garden and plant winter crops…or read a book in the sun! This week the girls and I have planted sunflowers, separated succulents, and placed and planted a…
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