New Curriculum resources... Yippee!!

English Online have launched their new resource site to help us out with getting our teeth into the new curriculum - here's the link

Enhancing English - New Curriculum Resource

I suggest you bookmark it and read it every day over the holidays!!!!

10 best books of 2007...

Have you read any of them?

Check the link below and see what Amazon calls the best of the year..

Top 10 books 2007

Amazon's new e-book tool - Kindle...

Do you think that this will ever replace the feel of a book in our hands.....

Amazon - Kindle ...

What say you????

Using Wikis for Yr 10 Research

I've just started experimenting with wikis for collaborative research with 10GB -



You can check out my initial pages and the task that I have set them. In the side bar you can access some of the ones they have started creating - only in their infancy and unedited (!!!!).

http://10gbresearch.wikispaces.com/

Of course you won't be able to access some of my vodpod - if they are from Youtube...aah the wonders of technology and watchdogs....

2008 English Conference - Takapuna, July 9-11

Next year's NZATE conference is fairly close to home at Takapuna Grammar (well reasonably close.....). Nice logo too.


Here's the link so if you want to follow what's going to be happening there you can.

http://www.textualsea.org.nz/

You may even want to think about attending .......

Curriculum Assistance Online

At the HOD conference I attended today there were a number of links/resources/papers discussed that will be of use to us as a department when we come to look at implementing the new curriculum.

Levels 2, 4, 6, 8 have been 'unpacked' on the English Online link here - http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/enhancingtheenglishcurriculum/

It provides definitions, links to current resources and will eventually (hopefully) cover all levels of the curriculum.

Vocab game with a twist - FreeRice

Free Rice is a vocaublary 'game' with an humanitarian twist. Launched October 7, 2007, FreeRice.com presents the user with a vocabulary word and asks him/her to select the definition from a list. Get it right, and it moves the user to a more challenging level. Get it wrong, and it moves the user to an easier level. For each correct answer, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food program.

Check it out with your classes.....