ideas Archives - Oz Lit Teacher Narissa Leung

Writers And Their Notebooks: Meg McKinlay (Part 2)

In last week’s blog post I shared the first part of my interview with Australian children’s author Meg McKinlay. Meg gave us plenty of fascinating tidbits of information on how …

Writers and Their Notebooks: meg McKinlay

Meg McKinlay is, admittedly, one of my favourite Australian children’s authors. She’s written numerous award-winning picture books, including Once Upon a Small Rhinoceros, Ten Tiny Things and The Penguins are …

Interview with author Kaye Baillie

I was recently fortunate enough to interview Kaye Baillie, the author of one of the most heart-warming books ever, Boo Loves Books (where two of my loves- books and cute …

4 books to spark start-of-year notebook writing

Notebook writing is the perfect start-of-year activity for your literacy classroom- it builds community and teaches students timely strategies for generating ideas for writing. Now that’s a win-win right there. …

Writers and their notebooks: Trace Balla

One question I get asked a lot is “how should we use writer’s notebooks with students?” I am all about authenticity so I thought it would make sense to ask …

Classroom libraries: All your questions answered (Part 1)

It’s early days in the school year and you want to make sure you are setting your students up for absolute success in all things literacy this year. You’ve got …

5 Teacher tips for overcoming “I Don’t know what to write about”

After spending all weekend working out the best way to teach a genre, locating the required resources and then executing the perfect minilesson, the last thing a teacher wants to …

5 alternatives to the dreaded “write about your holidays” prompt.

I once had a neighbour ask me about orienteering as she said she thought her son might like it. I gave her all the information about our next event and …