Pānui – Keeping you in touch
Launch of Children’s Day website
Aotearoa New Zealand’s day to celebrate our children is Children’s Day – Te Rā o te Tamariki. From 2007, this event will be held on the first Sunday in March. For 2007, the theme is giving time and the animal is the Hector’s dolphin. To see what events are already planned or to share your ideas, visit Children’s Day – Te Rā O Te Tamariki.
Thirteen-digit ISBNs from January 2007
From January 2007, there will be a small but important change to how all books and book-related products are identified worldwide. ISBNs (international standard book numbers) will change from ten to thirteen digits. To read more about this, visit the National Library of New Zealand Advice and Services, select ‘Putting out a publication’, then ‘Issuing ISBN’.
Customer Services at Learning Media will continue to provide and recognise a short (five-digit) item number for ordering Ministry of Education materials.
New Zealand Writers’ DVD to be published in 2007
The Ministry of Education, in partnership with New Zealand Post, are developing a resource to support the English curriculum. Kate de Goldi’s interviews with Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby, and Margaret Mahy, three distinguished New Zealand writers for children and teenagers, will be released on DVD in 2007. Kate is well known as a writer of children’s and young adult fiction, a teacher of creative writing, and a book reviewer. The interviews were initiated and filmed by Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters.
The interviews provide a unique opportunity to make connections within and between the three writers as they talk of their influences, beliefs, and work. Materials supplied with the DVD will guide teachers and students as they watch the full interviews or introductory taster selections. Teachers and students can also use the DVD as a guide:
- to areas for research – schools could download the interviews onto their intranet to give students individual access to the material
- to interviewing and subsequent formal writing
- to creative writing.
Exploring the interviews will offer a great opportunity to show how the “making connections” component in the draft New Zealand Curriculum for English can work within senior secondary programmes.