The Duo
We are Liz & Graeme Swanson. If you add our expertise and professional practice together, we have 57 years under our belts. We provide PLD for the education sector that empowers teachers to harness the science of learning to achieve effective teaching and learning. With specialisms in language and literacy acceleration, coaching and mentoring, and a solid understanding of cognitive processes, brain function, and social-emotional factors influencing learning, we look forward to sharing all that we understand, know and do, with you.
Teachers
The craft of teaching can seem overly complex. Teachers often feel overwhelmed by the sea of information, proclamations of evidence-based practice and change directives they face. At Storyways Literacy, we believe in sustaining the human-to-human core of our trade. The literacy pedagogies, positive behaviour management tools, and the creative classroom habits that we endorse are workable and effective. We promote practices that enhance relationships, are deeply engaging, and proven to accelerate learning. The best way to deliver Te Mātaiaho: the NZ curriculum, we believe, is through a knowledge-rich connected approach where content learning, oral language, reading and writing are delivered through an integrated model of practices. In this way, it is possible to reach into all areas of the curriculum, rather than a bolt-on endeavour to cram social studies, science and the arts into the leftover spaces of our days. Furthermore, when learners have a defined pathway of practice whereby constrained skills are applied to meaningful contexts, then we can truly measure the acceleration effect of great structured literacy teaching.
Learners
Our vision is for children from diverse ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and learning dispositions to become active, involved citizens of our future. To be so, we need to raise children with a deep knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live. We need to gift them all the nuances of our language, to empower them with voice, and the ability to comprehend the many voices of our political, economic, social and scientific world. School days should be vibrant and fun, and remembered fondly, not stressed. Every child deserves access to the curriculum, despite learning difficulties or delays. A child delayed in decoding need not be a child left behind in comprehending and communication across the curriculum. This is achievable only when equity sits at the heart of learning and teaching.