Meet the project team
Breda Matthews
Breda is the secondary ESOL facilitator. She has been a head of ESOL and has taught ESOL and English to students from a wide range of educational and language backgrounds.Breda has worked for TEAM Solutions as an ESOL facilitator, has served on NCEA review panels and has written a number of resources including NCEA teaching and assessment materials. Breda has a B.Ed in History and Education (London), an MA in Historical Studies (Greenwich), a Dip TESSOL (ACE) and an MA in Applied Linguistics (Victoria University of Wellington).
Janet McQueen
Janet is the primary ESOL facilitator. She is an experienced primary school and ESOL teacher having mainly taught in year 5-8 classrooms and has been a local ESOL PLD cluster leader. Most recently Janet worked as Senior Advisor Literacy/ESOL at the Ministry of Education national office where she had responsibility for primary ESOL. As part of her work at the Ministry she project led the writing of the ‘Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners’ a module to support implementation of National Standards and the online English Language Learning Progressions Professional Support Modules as well as contributing to the Ministry National Standards English Language Learners’ Guidelines and managed the primary ESOL and Home-School Partnerships professional learning and development advisory service contracts. She has a Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language in Schools from the University of Auckland.
Denise Hitchcock
Denise is the secondary literacy facilitator. She has worked as a secondary literacy adviser in the Wellington region for several years and has been a national coordinator for the Secondary Literacy Project. Denise is currently engaged in PhD research in adolescent literacy across the curriculum. She works part time as a secondary adviser for Accent Learning in Wellington.
Kate Birch
Kate Birch is an experienced teacher who has taught in both primary and secondary schools. With a lifelong passion for reading and writing, she specialized in literacy and has been a literacy facilitator since 2004. She is currently a consultant in Cognition's Visible Learning Plus Team and also consults independently to schools. Kate developed the Chunk, Check, Cheer strategy approach for reading and spelling.
Mike Fowler
Mike is the secondary English facilitator. He has taught English for 32 years in a range of secondary schools and for the last 15 years at Hagley Community College in Christchurch. He has worked at a national level in assessment and curriculum in English as the lead writer for the redevelopment of the NCEA standards and co-writer of the Achievement Objectives in The New Zealand Curriculum. Mike has been the National Moderator and a panel leader for various NCEA external standards. He has been extensively involved in developing teaching materials and in educational media production.
Hamish Chalmers
Hamish is Specialist Subject Leader of English, Impact Project Leader at Albany Senior High School and the ICTs in English facilitator for English Online. He has taught English and digital technology for eight years in a range of secondary schools and developed educational resources including TEN and ELEVEN with vislearn. He has worked at a national level as part of a writing team on the level three aligned standards and the development of the English Teaching and Learning Guide.
Phil Coogan
Phil been a secondary English teacher and head of English, advisor to schools, teacher educator and director of Unitec in Schools and is currently principal consultant for Cognition Education Ltd. He directed the contracts for the “old” English and ESOL Online websites, along with Arts and Social Studies Online and is still directing Arts Online. He has been extensively involved in developing teaching materials and in educational media production, including the directing the production of Making Language and Learning Work: 1, 2 and 3.
His research interests have spanned the teaching of English, ICTs and assessment and his doctoral thesis focused on the intersection of all three. He has been director of six ICT PD clusters and two ICT Strategic Leadership contracts. In 2008, as part of the INSTEP Consolidation phase, he managed a project which focused on effective facilitation of online communities of practice.
Maria Lute
Maria’s background is in primary education and she is currently Principal Consultant with Cognition Education Ltd. She has been Professional Manager of Te Kete Ipurangi www.tki.org.nz
for the past five years and in this position has contributed widely to the Ministry’s strategy for the re-development of the education channel. Her role has also involved working with teachers in schools and at ICT-related seminars and conferences to demonstrate best practice with new technologies in e-learning. She managed the Software for Learning website for the past three years and has further experience with other educational projects through her project management credentials.
