Dr. Noella M. Mackenzie talks about the new edition of her book Understanding and Supporting Young Writers from Birth to 8, an interview by Dr. Sam Bommarito

The connection between reading and writing instruction is well-known and well-documented. Helping kids learn the strategies to become good writers also helps them become good readers. I remember when I first learned that good readers learn to read like writers. I began seeing the writing craft contained in all the things I read. I began thinking of myself as a writer, something I’d never done in my early teaching career. Over the years, I’ve learned from experts like Lucy Calkins, Katie Ray Woods, Isoke Nia, Leah Mermelstein, Gravity Goldberg, Janet Steinberg, Ralph Fletcher and others. Taking advantage of the symbiotic relationship between reading and writing has helped me help my kids. Today, I’m adding one more expert to the list of folks who help teachers to do just that. Her name is Dr. Noella Mackenzie. She is a widely published professor from Australia. See the biography below for details. She has spent a lifetime teaching teachers the benefits of teaching their kids how to write. She has also helped teachers to overcome their fears about teaching writing. The main audience for her work has been in Australia. I thought it important to share her ideas and resources with an American audience. She just released the second edition of her book, Understanding and Supporting Young Writers from Birth to 8. In today’s interview, she talks about that book and the ideas and resources from that book. Her biography and the YouTube interview now follow:

BIOGRAPHY

Dr Noella Mackenzie is an Associate Professor (adjunct) in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Australian Literacy Educators Association (ALEA) and an independent consultant. Noella is an experienced literacy educator and researcher. Her research has focused on teachers and the learning and teaching of multimodal text creation, the relationship between drawing, talking and writing, and the transition from drawing to writing. Noella has worked in both California and Canada, been on study trips to Finland, Scotland and New Zealand, and has presented keynotes at conferences as far afield as Iceland. She has co-edited three books, written numerous invited chapters and published many papers in professional and research journals.

Here are the timed stamped talking points for the interview (so, you can go to the sections that interest you the most first)

Here is a link to the U-Tube Interview:

Link to the book: LINK

Link to Website (contains resources explained in the interview): LINK  

Link to her blog: LINK

My Thoughts about the interview:

The folks in the United States are not the only people concerned about the issue of best practices in teaching reading and writing. I thought my readers would enjoy a fresh perspective on that topic. I find several encouraging things in Dr. Mackenzie’s work. Her blog posts around literacy issues add new ideas and information. The resources from her book and the free resources from her webpage will give teachers many useful things they can “use on Monday.” Dr. Mackenzie has done many keynote speeches. She shared that duty with Tim Shanahan in one of her recent ones. She reported that there was common ground and common research-based practices in their two presentations. In addition, she is hopeful that ideas like Seidenberg’s take-off point, where he says there needs to be a transition from explicit to implicit instruction, open up the possibility that the discussions can lead to greater agreement. As a centrist, this encourages me to continue to make my readers aware of several ideas and possibilities.

So, until next week, Happy Reading and Writing.

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)

Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s views and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

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