August 2, 2013
The Donald Graves Memorial speech for ALEA 2012
A recent speech (2012) appears below, by request. It’s the speech for the first Donald Graves Memorial Lecture at the national Australia Literacy Educators Association […]
read hereDecember 5, 2016
Should we teach writing well or badly?
© Mem Fox The Donald Graves Memorial Speech Australian Literacy Educators convention, July 2012 Once upon a time—in 1992—I found myself in Donald Graves’ house […]
read hereDecember 5, 2016
If Wishes were Horses by Mem Fox
Keynote for Geelong 2015 Abstract: We cannot expect the children in our classes to write anything half-decent unless they have something half-decent in heads to […]
read hereAugust 9, 2013
The Folly of Jolly Old Phonics
A phonics tale of three children (with morals for teachers of reading) © Mem Fox 2008 This piece was presented at a conference of Auckland principals in […]
read hereAugust 8, 2013
A read-aloud lesson
Section 1 (Click the “play” buttons to hear the text read aloud.) An American father once said to me: “So how do you do this […]
read hereAugust 8, 2013
Learning from learning
Try as we might, none of us will ever be perfect teachers. The most we can hope for, in our quest to be God, is […]
read hereAugust 7, 2013
In the teaching olympics, who wins gold?
Fox and Wilkinson ‘94 Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when it was announced that Sydney would host the year […]
read hereAugust 6, 2013
Notes from the battlefield
Towards A Theory Of Why People Write (This article was first published in ‘Language Arts’, Vol. 65 No. 2 Feb. 1988) I’m a writer. As […]
read hereAugust 5, 2013
Politics, literature and green shoes
Current Realities In Whole Language This article was first presented as a keynote speech at the August, 1992 Whole Language Umbrella Conference. Because of the […]
read hereAugust 4, 2013
If I were queen of the world
A Talk For Parents On Teaching Children How To Read Before School If I were the queen of the world, teachers wouldn’t have to teach […]
read hereAugust 3, 2013
Like mud, not fireworks
The Place Of Passion In The Development Of Literacy What has passion to do with literacy? What has hairdressing to do with literacy? What has […]
read here