NZ teachers help select best educational resources for 2015

20 November 2015

NZ teachers help select best educational resources for 2015

2015 CLNZ Education Award winners named

Locally relevant, New Zealand content has won the vote of teachers around the country as well as awards from a panel of education experts. The recipients of the 2015 CLNZ Education Awards were announced at a ceremony in Auckland last night.

The CLNZ Education Awards are a celebration of the excellent resources New Zealand companies have recently released in the New Zealand education market. In 2015, classroom teachers from across New Zealand joined forces with a judging panel of education experts to add their choice of the best resources to the judge’s selection of award winning educational resources.

The CONNNECTORS Fiction Series (Global Ed), which uses a reciprocal reading approach to encourage reading development, was named Best Resource in Primary for 2015 by the judging panel. The judges commended the series for its use of stories and contexts that engage a diverse range of students and challenge their thinking. These attributes and the commercial success of the series developed for the UK market also saw CONNECTORS Fiction named as the 2015 Best Resource for Export – demonstrating that excellent NZ content also performs very well in overseas education markets.

Winner of Best Resource in Secondary and, according to the judging panel, in a league of its own as a resource that can be used by teachers across a variety of disciplines, was Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History (Bridget Williams Books). Visually rich, Tangata Whenua charts Māori history from ancient origins to present day.

Working with Māori children with special education needs: He mahi whakahirahira (NZCER Press) won the award for Best Resource in Higher Education. The book explores physical disability, intellectual disability, vision and hearing impairment, autism spectrum disorder, and giftedness from a Māori perspective as well as the key components of culturally responsive, evidence-based, special education practice.

The Te Reo Singalong Books (The Writing Bug) were named the Best Resource in Te Reo Māori. This series impressed the judges as well as the Te Reo Tuatahi teaching network who were consulting judges in this category. Matariki, a title in this series was also the favourite of teachers across New Zealand who voted in the Teachers’ Choice element of the awards. Matariki was voted Teachers’ Choice: Best Resource in Te Reo Māori for 2015. ‘Great and user-friendly’ commented one voting teacher.

The Teachers’ Choice award for Best Resource in Primary was presented to NZ Curriculum Mathematics: Connecting all Strands (Caxton Educational). Voting teachers commented that the resource ‘adds an extra dimension to my numeracy programme’ and ‘is awesome for allowing students to self-direct their own learning and connect numeracy with other strands.’

The Teachers’ Choice award for Best Resource in Secondary was awarded to ESA Publications’ custom workbooks. Secondary school teachers who voted in the Teachers’ Choice survey were impressed by these resources and some suggested areas they would like to see further study guides and workbooks created for, including transitioning ESOL students to mainstream environments.

Best Resource in Primary
CONNECTORS Fiction Series, Jill Eggleton and Tracy Strudley, Global Ed

Best Resource in Secondary

Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris, Bridget Williams Books

Te Reo Māori

Te Reo Singalong Books, Sharon Holt, The Writing Bug

Higher Education

Working with Māori children with special education needs: He mahi whakahirahira, Jill Bevan-Brown, NZCER Press

Best Resource for Export

CONNECTORS Fiction Series, Jill Eggleton and Tracy Strudley, Global Ed

Teachers’ Choice: Best Resource in Primary
NZ Curriculum Mathematics: Connecting All Strands, M.J. Tipler and S.C. Timperley, Caxton Educational

Teachers’ Choice: Best Resource in Secondary

ESA Custom Learning Workbooks, ESA Publications

Teachers’ Choice: Best Resource in Te Reo Māori

Te Reo Singalong Books: Matariki, Sharon Holt, The Writing Bug

The 2015 judging panel – click here to read full biographies for each judge

Andrew Cowie

Angela Fitchett

Dr Jenny Robertson

David Glover – consulting judge, export

Brenda McPherson and the Te Reo Tuatahi teaching network – consulting judges, Te Reo Māori

ends

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