Literacy - Page 10 - Jane Farrall Consulting

Literacy Lab: a great tool for quality literacy instruction

Jun 18, 20135 Comments

Please note: this resource has been discontinued. Literacy Lab is a fabulous piece of software for use as part of balanced literacy instruction from Mayer Johnson. The software is aimed at emergent readers and writers, providing a range of simple, easy to use highly motivating activities. I have been using it for a few weeks

Predictable Chart Writing: Group Writing for All

Jun 6, 201315 Comments

Recently I have been talking a lot to teachers about doing group writing in their classroom. As teachers implement a balanced literacy program in their classrooms, it is important that writing happens daily - and that writing happens for real reasons. Writing is one of the most complex tasks that we ask students to do.

Literacy and AAC Presentations from AGOSCI 2013

May 4, 20136 Comments

Yesterday I was very lucky to present three papers around the topic of literacy instruction for students with complex communication needs (CCN) at the 2013 AGOSCI Conference. The first presentation was with the awesome Dr Sally Clendon. Sally and I both do similar consulting roles - although Sally is based in Auckland, New Zealand. We

Favourites and Collections - Creating bookshelves in Tar Heel Reader

Apr 16, 20133 Comments

This is my third blog post about the new look Tar Heel Reader. I am finding these new features so useful - and I hope you are too. In this post I'm going to focus on Favourites and Collections - both of which are great ways to store and share groups of books in Tar

Using Tar Heel Reader in app mode on your iPad

Mar 17, 20138 Comments

This is my second post in a short while about Tar Heel Reader - but I just wanted to take a look at some of the great new (and old) features while Tar Heel Reader's new look is still fresh! The second of these features is full screen or app mode - which is a

Self-selected Reading for Early Readers of All Ages

Mar 7, 2013

Today's post is brought to you by the two guiding rules of self-selected reading. It isn't self-selected if you don't choose it yourself. You can't get better at it if it's too hard. One of the literacy activities that we want students to engage in is self-selected reading. Self-selected reading has many purposes: it gives

Putting Tar Heel Reader books into iBooks - with Speech!

Mar 4, 201324 Comments

I am a HUGE fan of Tar Heel Reader - and have blogged about it before. However, Tar Heel Reader has had a big upgrade and has some great changes that I am going to write about over a few blog posts. Today, I'm going to focus specifically on the ability to put your Tar

Lots of alternatives - "pencils" for everyone

Dec 19, 201213 Comments

When I first started teaching literacy I focused on teaching reading. At the time, I was working with adults with physical disabilities and writing seemed so hard. None of my class would be able to use a pen or even a keyboard and mouse, which was all I had access to (or so I thought).

Abilipad - still the Write tool for the iPad

Dec 13, 201213 Comments

It's a time of the year when we do lots of writing - cards, thank-you letters, emails, Facebook status updates, Tweets, reports and (apparently) blog posts! Since I am spending so much time writing at the moment, I thought it was time to write about my very favourite writing app for the iPad - Abilipad.

Introduction to Guided Reading: Presentation at Ascot Vale Special School

Nov 28, 2012

Edited to add: Many of the links in this blog post are no longer current The handout can be downloaded by clicking here. Other resources I mentioned in the presentation are: Four Blocks to Literacy website Four Blocks in Special Ed Wiki Centre for Literacy and Disability Studies, University of North Carolina My Guided Reading