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Hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people.

Every teacher in every classroom has practices that have been a staple of their teaching forever and a day. These practices are taken for granted and done just because it's how we do things. That's a good thing. We need automaticity and certainty in our lives, but there are times when it's just a good idea to take stock and check in about whether our o…

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss the need to eliminate distractions and disruptions to maximise learning.

Video Transcript

Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, it's time for a tip. This is number three in our series about maintaining high engagement in low variance instruction. And our tip today is about eliminating distraction and disruption. Kids tapping pencils, having whispered conversations, the teacher talking way too long on things that are not relevant.

These all constitute extran…

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy podcast. I’m Jocelyn and today I’m recording on the lands of the Palawa people here in Tasmania. In our last episode of the podcast, I shared 5 reasons that traditional professional learning probably isn’t leading to student outcomes. In that episode, I discussed cognitive biases that lead us to believe that we have more knowledge than we do. It turns out that people with less knowledge about a topi…

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss consistently using affirmation, praising students for their efforts to boost confidence and encouraging positive interactions among peers.

Video Transcript

Hey there, it's Jocelyn with tip number two about maintaining high engagement in low variance instruction. My tip today is about injecting affirmation. Everybody wants to feel good about what they do. And we all love being told that we've done a good job. So, when your students do something right…

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Hi there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm Jocelyn and I'm so very pleased to welcome you to this episode recorded here on the lands of the Palawa people of Tasmania.

My goodness, the year is flying by. I'm recording this in the last week of September and Christmas feels like it's just around the corner.

Over the years, I have supported many schools with consultancy and coaching to help them achieve their big picture goals. This human-centered w…

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss that a lively and positive attitude from teachers can significantly boost student engagement in a low variance lesson.

Video Transcript

Hey there, it's Tuesday and time for a tip. We're doing a little series of tips about how to maintain high engagement in low variance lessons. And this is tip number one.

If we want children to be enthusiastic about learning, we have to manage our own attitude. If we announce our reading lesson by saying, Okay, come o…

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Welcome to today's episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast, recorded on the lands of the Palawa people of Tasmania. I'm recording this in September 2024 and it's the time of year in Australia when schools begin to turn their eye to making decisions about instruction for the next school year.

To support those efforts, today we're diving into a crucial topic for school leaders: how to successfully implement a new teaching program in your school.

Whether yo…

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss front loading vocabulary and concepts to help students with language difficulties engage more effectively in lessons.

Video Transcript

Hi there, it's Jocelyn, it's time for a tip. This week we're talking about front loading vocabulary and concepts. This is a suggestion often made by speechies for students with language difficulties or processing challenges. Now for these students, what often happens is what the teacher provides in terms of that lead up is not…

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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast.

I'm Jocelyn, and today we're diving into a topic that's pretty important for teachers in grades three to six:

How do we connect explicit, structured spelling instruction with opportunities for application and engagement?

Now I know what some of you might be thinking, Jocelyn isn't explicit teaching of spelling just about repeated practice and low variance instruction? Yes, that's a f…

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss that to effectively teach children about word formation, you need to combine phonics with morphology.

Video Transcript

Hi everyone, it's Tuesday and it's time for a tip. Very often when we want to unpack words for children during a lesson, we mark the words up, which is a really great idea. That works nicely for the word take t-a-ke, but what about when it comes to taking? This kind of straight marking up doesn't necessarily work as we…