ETAQ E-pistle 12-10
Posted by Garry Collins on June 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment
State Conference Update
With the theme “English in the era of the Australian Curriculum”, this year’s ETAQ State Conference will be run at the Anglican Church Grammar School at East Brisbane over the weekend 14-15 August.
The keynote speakers will be:
Saturday morning: joint presenters - Lesley Englert, Queensland nominee on the ACARA Board, and Lynn Redley, ACARA chief writer for the Australian Curriculum in English.
Saturday afternoon: Dr Alison Scott, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Queensland.
Workshops Proposals are sought from people interested in conducting supporting workshops. The formal call for session presenters will be included in the June mailing and can be downloaded from the Events page of the ETAQ website at http://www.etaq.org.au/?page_id=106 . Sessions on the Saturday will be 1 hour while the Sunday morning program will have two 90 minute time slots. Proposals are required by Saturday 26 June and will need to include a title, an abstract and a brief bio.
National Celebration of Literacy
This year AATE is again working with ALEA on a special initiative to be run during National Literacy and Numeracy Week (29 August to 4 September). In previous years it has been known as National Reading Day, but this year it will be extended across the whole of NLNW and will be called the National Celebration of Literacy.
The theme is Learning for Living. The Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) and the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) are developing activities for the website in conjunction with DEEWR. The activities developed this year focus on reading and writing for real audiences and real purposes.
The National Celebration of Literacy follows the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book Week, held from 21-27 August with the theme, this year of Across the Story Bridge. Many schools already celebrate children’s literature during this time and the National Celebration of Literacy encourages teachers to further develop activities begun during Book Week.
The website www.celebrationofliteracy.net.au is currently under development and will soon be open for schools to register and access a range of activities and ways of sharing children’s work within the school and to a wider community. However, the main focus this year is on digital stories.
Digital Stories are short, personal, multimedia presentations created through image, edited on a computer with video editing software to include a spoken narrative. Digital stories generally contain 10-15 images, 250 words and are 2-3 minutes in length. The website will feature examples of digital stories from students to inform and inspire teachers to get involved.
Schools that participate in the National Celebration of Literacy will be eligible to win a range of prizes that will be featured on the website. A brochure is currently being prepared by DEEWR to assist schools with planning.
The Project Manager is Wendy Bean. If you would like to receive regular updates please contact Wendy, wendyb@uow.edu.au