“Teacher Comes to End of a Chapter”
The West Australian January 29, 2015 by Bethany Hiatt
“Rosalie Hamilton, 75, has seen teaching methods come and go during a career spanning half a century.
The Year 1 teacher closed her classroom door at South Lake Primary School for good last month after more than 50 years of teaching every age group from kindergarten to Year 12.
‘I never tire of teaching reading,’ she said.’That’s my passion. I love seeing the little flowers open as they learn.’
Mrs Hamilton said that in the 1960’s teachers used phonics – the relationship between letters and sounds – to teach reading, but that was later frowned on.
‘The idea was that children would just pick it up by reading,’ she said. ‘We went through phases of look and say and learning from literature. We still have that, but I think that before you get to that you have to have this really basic bedrock of know ing sounds and knowing digraphs.’
She is pleased the pendulum has swung back towards phonics.”