Personal profile: Roxanne Steenbergen

Roxanne has thirty-five years of experience in primary teaching across a range schools. For over fifteen of those years Roxanne taught gifted and talented students online through the Department of Education’s Centre for Extended Learning (now the Gifted Online program). Through this program Roxanne engaged with students across Tasmania. In 2007, Roxanne and a colleague jointly won the Microsoft 2007 Innovative Teacher Award for their “Cool Chemistry” project. The project involved the creation of a virtual classroom connecting two schools, two teachers and a practising chemist. Within this environment, children used a range of software to share and compare their inquiries.

Roxanne also has a keen interest in literacy through childhood reading and believes every student should have books in their hands whenever they want one – whether they are classics like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or the more modern stories of the 13-storey treehouse series. She won the Scholastic Literacy Champion Award in 2013. Roxanne retired from teaching in June 2018, but retains a strong interest in making Science teaching accessible to everyone.

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