About this site
English Online is a site for primary and secondary English teachers in New Zealand and internationally. ESOL Online and Literacy Online are sister sites.
Site framework:
Each home page shares the same framework and navigation:
- Learning about my students' needs.
- Planning for my students' needs.
- Impact of changed practices.
Each site hosts a community for teachers to share knowledge, ask questions and support each other.
The common framework also addresses content knowledge and pedagogy. The English Online framework has been aligned to the English curriculum achievement objectives.
The website, together with ESOL Online and Literacy Online, has an explicit learning orientation:
- combines constructivist learning theory with the ‘teaching as inquiry’ framework as expressed in the New Zealand Curriculum
- is informed by the best evidence synthesis iterations (BESs)
- focuses teacher and leaders on evidence-based decision making
- exemplifies and integrates the dimensions of effective practice
- supports coherence and alignment within and between the three websites
- amplifies and connects the 'big ideas' in the Ministry’s schooling strategy by making them visually and structurally explicit.
Principles that underpin the site:
- All learners can achieve.
- Content and pedagogical knowledge is essential for effective instruction.
- Knowledge of students’ progressions is critical to meeting students’ diverse needs.
- Students need responsive and personalised instruction.
- Teaching decisions should be based on evidence of students’ strengths and needs.
- Teaching and learning sequence tasks need to have a clearly defined pedagogical rationale.
- Teachers’ ongoing inquiry into the impact of their teaching decisions is essential for providing effective differentiated instruction.
- Ongoing inquiry into underachievement is a key to schooling improvement.
- Practice is informed by contemporary research and thinking.
How did English Online begin?
English Online was originally part of an ongoing English professional development contract between Unitec and the New Zealand Ministry of Education. In 1998 and 1999, it involved 100 primary and secondary schools per year. Each school nominated a lead teacher who undertook an Internet tutorial, and then developed a unit of that was posted on the site as a permanent resource for New Zealand (and international) English teachers.
Updated on: 17 Jan 2018