2019 Literacy Intensive

Great news! The 2019 Literacy Intensive course presented by myself (Jane Farrall) and Dr Sally Clendon is now open for registrations! Details Dates: Monday 30th September – Friday 4th of October Location Currumbin Community Special School, Currumbin 5 Hammersford Drive, Currumbin Waters, QLD 4223 Cost $1600 (includes morning tea, lunch and tea/coffee each day plus

AGOSCI 2017 Presentations

Today I went to one of my very happy places - an AGOSCI conference.  I love AGOSCI.  The Australian AAC Community is so inclusive and supportive - and extremely clever!  The AGOSCI 2017 conference was fabulous as always - and I'm just sorry that for the first time in 25 years I'm not attending the whole

Alphabet Books Galore!

It's Book Week here in Australia - with the wonderful theme of "Books Light Up Our World".  In honour of Book Week I thought I'd write about alphabet books. Alphabet books come in all sizes and types and for all ages. They can be fiction and non-fiction, based on photographs or illustrations, customised or generic.

Working with Letters, Sounds and Words in our Classrooms

Working with letters, sounds and words are important components of literacy instruction in our classrooms. Emergent students need explicit and incidental instruction around the alphabet and sounds, to improve their alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness.  Conventional students need to learn how words work. Below is a checklist I use with teachers in working through the

ISAAC 2014 Handouts

The ISAAC 2014 Conference in Lisbon was fabulous! Big congratulations to the Conference Co-Chairs, Luis Azevedo, Margarida Nunes da Ponte, Pedro Encarnação and Isabel Amaral. Also a big thanks and congratulations to ISAAC, the organisers and everyone involved, including the amazing volunteers who were such good hosts. For those of you who attended my sessions

Letter of the Week: Resources for Older Students

This year, I'm working with quite a few teachers who have older students in their class who need to improve their recognition of the letters of the alphabet.  They need to be able to instantly and quickly identify letters so that they can move further along their journey of becoming readers and writers. This means