We hope fourth term has begun well for you. This e-newsletter can be shared with colleagues and community members who may find it helpful and hopefully consider becoming a Friend.

Past featured articles and resources can be accessed in the newsletters archive. 

Authentic literacy assessment is the theme of FFLL Touchstone 8 and is our specific focus this month. 

The main purpose for literacy assessment is to inform responsive teaching and provide learners, their teachers, parents/caregivers and school systems with information that informs all stakeholders of progress and achievements.

There are a number of articles under the Research and Practice tab on the FFLL website that offer suggestions for literacy assessment that enable teachers to assess learner literacy using strategies that go beyond high stakes national testing results. For example, Lian and Powell (2025) draw on neuroscientific research to demonstrate how important it is for learners to understand how effective writing is more than linguistic accuracy. They suggest an assessment framework that examines how writing engages and shifts the emotions of their audience.

In her chapter Learning to Write: Analysing writing samples as examples of how children become writers Annette Woods focuses on the importance of developing a consistent approach to assessing writing in the primary years. She underlines the importance of regularly analysing samples of learners’ writing across the years.

Advocacy activities
FFLL Committee members have been discussing the importance of developing tangible requests to be shared with education ministers and system policy makers. These asks are:

• include Australian school leaders and experienced classroom educators in policymaking and decision-making about learning and literacy education for our schools and early learning centres.
• ensure policy and professional practice are guided by peer-reviewed, extensive classroom-tested research.
• fund every early learning centre and school equitably to ensure all are equipped with high quality resources, including a Library and qualified Teacher Librarian.
• provide high quality and inclusive literature and resources for every Australian preschool and classroom.

We plan to embed these requests in our advocacy activities.

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated on the last Friday in October each year. On this day, please encourage parents and your community to celebrate and show gratitude to teachers. Importantly, always show respect and trust for those who have the responsibility for nurturing and shaping young minds in the classroom.

Yours in literacy,
The Executive and General Committees
Foundation for Learning and Literacy

A new Ambassador video has been added to our 2025 Symposium this month making six under the theme of We all like a good story-imagine the possibilities.

In her video, Merrki Ganambarr-Stubbs, a teacher in north-east Arnhem Land, talks about how important it is that Yolngu oral stories are written down for future generations.

Partner Activity
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) has published a new book Counting Crocodiles written by children from Bulla Camp Primary in a remote town west of Katherine in the Northern Territory. ILF Ambassadors Ann James and Lee Burgemeestre, ILF Regional Coordinator Josie Lardy and workshop leader Ann Haddon worked with the students linking the focus on counting with what they were learning in the classroom at the time.

The next event in the Australian School Libraries Association (ASLA) seminar series is a presentation on 5 November at 7.30pm by author Jacqueline Harvey who will share her love of stories. More detail can be found here.

Our FFLL Socials and News

Please join us on LinkedIn here .

Friends are also invited to join our private Facebook FFLL group .

Current items related to all areas of literacy and learning are regularly posted in our NEWS area. For example, recent News pieces include:

• News from Sally Rippon, Australian Children’s Laureate
• AI tool to roll out in all South Australian Public Schools

Want to get in touch with us with your ideas and comments? Write to
learningandliteracy2020@gmail.com

The members of the Foundation for Learning and Literacy acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the country that we call Australia.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future.

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