Literacy Ramble 4.5.16

On Wednesday as our syndicate meeting we went to a presentation by Jill Eggleton about language. She is an author of many books we use as school and is a Literacy genius. She spoke of the importance of poetry, repetition and rhyme, and reading to children just for fun and not asking them a whole heap of questions.
It was great to hear her experiences with kids and their literacy journeys. The main thing I took away was to keep the learning fun and relevant children. I am going to incorporate more poetry and more reading to children. It is easy to put these things off as there is so many things we need to do however its very important to help children develop language, a love of books and learning.
Jill Eggleton pointed out some great kiwi authors, Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley, have some wonderful language in their stories. Many great writers make up interesting language and use description to really pull the reader into their stories.
After the Jill Eggleton talk we went through to the Literacy Ramble to see some mini presentations from teachers around the Christchurch area and some things they are doing in their programmes which they find successful. We saw some great ideas to encourage children to monitor their own learning and goals before seeing the teacher. There were some great ideas to engage children and ways to share their learning.
The whole evening was great and it helped me remember some key things I need to do. I got some great ideas to use and some learnt some amazing things.