Reading Australia a treasure chest for Aussie teachers
December 5, 2017
Copyright Agency’s online educational resource, Reading Australia, has more than doubled its subscriber numbers this year, reaching over 11,000 teachers every month to let them know about a wide range of classroom activities available to help them teach Australian stories to students of all ages.
In the four years since its launch, the online resource hub has expanded from just 21 teaching resources for Aussie books to 142, including 95 essays.
In September, a panel of educational and publishing stakeholders with curriculum expertise met to discuss adding further texts to Reading Australia and agreed to introduce another 50 titles in the coming year.
Cultural Fund and Reading Australia Officer, Nicola Evans, said, “We’ve seen a strong uptake by teachers for the resources mapped to particularly popular titles, and plan to expand our book list with more contemporary favourites to ensure teachers can easily spread the love of Australian texts in their classrooms.”
Plans are also underway to commission further Primary and Secondary resources, including brand new Indigenous resources for eight new titles from Magabala Books – a publishing house that focuses on bringing Indigenous voices and talent to the forefront.
This follows the success of Reading Australia’s previous collaboration with Magabala Books in which 15 resources for primary school teachers were developed and published throughout 2017.
The project was inspired by the many teachers who reached out to Reading Australia to ask for more resources on works by Indigenous creators, and particularly units that showed non-Indigenous teachers how to teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories.
The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund has provided a grant of $51,200 to support the development of the new resources.