Blogs related to primary school subjects, teaching, learning, and more. Written by recognised author-educators and experienced staff. Each blog is tagged for easy filtering.
A practical guide and recommended resources for teacher assistants and learning support staff on everyday reading and writing strategies that help struggling readers build up their skills and reading confidence.
Dr Helen Walls reflects on her latest release with Dr Christine Braid and unpacks her top six research-backed reading strategies from How to Teach Reading – the latest title in their How to Teach collection.
Progress, not perfection. Fiona Boylan explores how a growth mindset benefits ECE and primary educators, helping children build resilience, confidence and a lifelong love of the learning journey.
Helen Walls explores her four-book writing intervention, offering practical, research-based tools to help teachers rebuild writing foundations and boost student confidence.
Discover how the How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar course helps teachers build confidence, align practice and boost student success through structured literacy.
Help your struggling readers build confidence and comprehension with Story Seekers Activity Books. These structured, dyslexia-friendly literacy resources combine phonics, oral language and comprehension activities to make reading enjoyable and effective for every learner.
Give young writers a strong start. Dr. Christine Braid breaks down sentence structures and construction, and the power of simple, complex and compound sentences taught well.
The Essential Planner 2026 helps Australian teachers stay organised, reduce stress, and plan with confidence – designed by educators, for educators.
Explore why the revised Story Seekers Series 1 is an essential, effective reading resource for struggling readers in primary schools across Australia, and how it offers targeted support for students with diverse needs.
In her latest blog, teaching expert, Dr Helen Walls emphasizes the importance of foundational writing skills. Foundational writing skills are essential for student progress. Discover why spelling, handwriting, and sentence writing are critical and how to support struggling writers in your classroom.
Introducing How to Build Writing Success Sentence by Sentence by Dr Christine Braid. Explore structured techniques and mentor texts and get help improving student sentence writing.
Anne Vize shares inclusive teaching strategies to support ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other diverse learners in early childhood or primary school settings.
Find out how Story Seekers has been expertly designed to support reluctant readers in schools. Foster a love of reading with engaging stories and fun activities.
Writing is not just a skill; it’s a way for children to make sense of their world. Learners who struggle with writing may feel disempowered,
Discover how Essential Resources delivered the best teaching resources of 2024, championing teacher wellbeing, inclusive education and creative arts across Australia.
Empower your teacher assistants with professional development courses on writing instruction. The evidence-based approaches provide a strong foundation for literacy teaching.
Stay organised and prepared throughout the school year with the Essential Teacher Planner 2025, the ultimate tool for educators featuring templates and teaching tips.
Teaching times tables is a crucial aspect of primary education, laying the groundwork for future academic success. By incorporating engaging and interactive methods, educators can make learning multiplication and division both enjoyable and effective.
When teaching reading, selecting the right texts is crucial for supporting learners’ progress. Decodable texts are essential for early readers as they reinforce specific phonics patterns and strengthen neural pathways for decoding words. However, over-reliance on decodable texts can limit exposure to high-frequency words, impacting reading fluency. Dr. Christine Braid explores strategies for teaching reading and learn how to balance different text types based on individual learners needs.
Discover how teaching morphology can enhance literacy development. Claire Knight explores the importance of morphemes, word structure, and gives practical examples to boost vocabulary.
Research has demonstrated that a child’s oral language skill level is an important predictor of their reading comprehension and writing skills.
Break up the worksheets with our fun maths activities. Not only will these reinforce learning. They will bring energy and excitement to the classroom.
To celebrate 2023, here is the A to Z of Essential Resources. We’re highlighting our top new releases, some long-time favourites, and the unique service we provide. Enjoy!
It may be baby steps at first, but soon it will be strides. First Steps with SOLO Taxonomy shows primary and secondary school teachers how to implement this powerful model of learning.
Dawn McMillan is an internationally recognised writer of picture books and educational texts. Her background is primary school teaching, with a special interest in writing and reading processes. She offers an insider’s guide to narrative writing.
Dr Helen Walls, The Writing Teacher, explains why we should move away from constructivism and towards explicit teaching.
Be ready to go when 2024 rolls in with The Essential Planner. Eye-catching designs and tailor-made for primary school, this is the essential Australian teacher planner.
Including music as a meaningful part of the curriculum can be challenging, particularly for those teachers unfamiliar with the subject. We draw on our primary school music resources to bring you easy and engaging activities to incorporate music into your classroom.
Sentence structure is a key component of teaching writing at primary school. Following the release of How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar, author Christine Braid explains how to build sentence knowledge clause by clause.
Are you calling out for new ways to excite your students? We have you covered with four fun and easy drama activities to mix things up in your classroom!
Implementing science experiments can be daunting for primary school teachers. Likewise, students can struggle to see their relevance to their lives. Julia Burton’s primary science resources want to help both appreciate and understand experiments.
Professor James Chapman reviews How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar by Helen Walls with Christine Braid
Few skills are more important in today’s world than reading. Yet, even though it is crucial, reading literacy has tracked downwards in Australia in the last 20 years. So how can we support struggling readers and build reading confidence?
It may seem old school, but fluency in basic facts in primary school is a crucial skill to progress further with mathematics. Fluency goes beyond memorising the times tables – it involves understanding and applying mathematics.
Having engaging mathematics resources on hand is important for getting primary school students enthusiastic about the subject. Read on for creative ways to teach problem solving and get students looking forward to their next maths class.
Author Helen Walls discusses the benefits of learning to write, reevaluates current teaching approaches and uses research to identify methods that better serve students.