Sunday 23 July 2017

The Compulsory Testing regime across Australian Schools

It is going to take me longer than I thought to edit Criterion #5 so here is an insight into the compulsory testing regime that exists across Australian Schools.  What I will offer in this post will eventually become a key Appendix to my book on School Effectiveness.


This blue section coloured as such on 22/7/2017 to become the first Appendix and to be referred to at the fist mention of NAPLAN in Tom’s book.

Tom was comfortable with schools being committed to the annual May NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) tests for students in Years 3,5,7 and 9 recognising that these tests covered skills in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy. He was also aware of the annual National Assessment Program (NAP) sample assessments occurring on a rolling basis such that in 2013, civics and citizenship was tested and in 2014 ICT literacy was tested with Science literacy to be tested in 2015. The NAP sample assessments were administered to a small sample of randomly selected schools.  Tom was also aware that as part of NAP Australia participated in international sample assessments two of which covered Mathematics and Science and Reading Literacy.  He knew about the official claim that NAPLAN assessments did not replace the ongoing teacher assessments about student performance.  From this comprehensive assessment program schools could gain an insight into how students were ranked within their age cohorts with some guidance on any diagnostic steps they might need to take to boost student performance.

Like others Tom had observed the considerable evidence that teachers and students felt an uncomfortable pressure from the annual NAPLAN skills tests.  He was reminded that as described on the NAP website (July 2015) the content of these tests is informed by the National Statement of Learning for English and National Statement of learning for Mathematics which underpin state and territory learning frameworks.  He also learned that it was anticipated that NAPLAN tests would be aligned with the ANC once it had been substantially implemented in schools.

Tom wanted schools to manage the annual NAPLAN testing in ways that did not create pressures on teachers and students.  Many students would face degrees of difficulty in the NAPLAN tests beyond the learning mastery stage that they had achieved in their journey through the ANC subjects.  This referred to Tom’s principle in applying the ANC subjects, that students attain mastery before moving on to the next learning step.  The Leopards would be one group who would need teacher confidence building to tackle the NAPLAN items.  They would need to be convinced that the results could assist their teachers to plan future learning.  They also needed to have confidence that even though their parents would receive the NAPLAN results that their parents understood from the school that the most important learning outcomes came from mastery in the  subjects of the ANC.




The NAPLAN results for each school are posted on a website 'my school' and are available for parent perusal and in the view of some enable parents to choose a successful school for their children.  This is a major pressure point for principals, especially if their school is located in a low socio economic area or is essentially a school for indigenous children, who in remote communities do not have a good record for regular school attendance.

Sorry about the blue text but it is all part of the editing process.

May the Force be with you!


GD

Friday 21 July 2017

School Effectiveness Criterion #5 coming soon

I've been off air for a few days having ventured to the Pilbara Region of North West Western Australia.  This is red dirt iron ore country.  Bewitching as I muse about the Australian indigenous peoples who wandered this country in the searing heat of summer with little protection from the stunted trees.  There is something deeply spiritual about this old worn down land. I am sure you feel the same way about parts of your countries.

My location contained a large senior high school and at least two government primary schools.  I was chatting to a young year 4 girl after her first day back for semester 2.  She quite bluntly told me that she doesn't like school. I was no position to explore the reasons why but worry when I hear such a young person saying this with so much sincerity.  Anyhow enough of that.

I am eager to post the detail of School Effectiveness Criterion #5 and yesterday made a first pass at this only to come to the conclusion that I needed to simplify and rewrite this vital section of my small book.

I am about to get to work on editing that section of my draft book which is currently titled:

Criterion #5 My School Makes Sure That As I Progress I Don’t Develop Gaps
                           In My English Language, Mathematics And Digital Skills
                           Learning (Aligns with SDP elements #s4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)



I trust that my Australian school principal colleagues have come back refreshed and ready for semester 2.



May the Force be with you!


GD

Thursday 13 July 2017

School Effectiveness criterion #4

Thought I might press on and offer more about school effectiveness.  Hope it is useful.  Following is the relevant excerpt from my draft book:



Criterion #4  My School Helps Me To Learn How To Learn (Aligns with SDP element #6)

Tom’s opening observation was that the more effective students are at being able to read, above all comprehending what they read, the more they are liberated to be independent learners.  He followed up with the further observation that adaptability to the rapid changes expected in the job market over the next decade made independent learning essential.

Even in the junior school years students can be given opportunities to learn independently of their teacher.  Around 5 years of age or even before they often become rather dogged about wanting to do things themselves.  Tom observed it in his youngest 5 year old granddaughter who was just in the first stages of being able to read and now was a little impatient when he was reading her a story, wanting to try and say the words for herself.

Other appropriate challenges are to set up a situation for the child to observe say the details of a large flower and describe what they see, even print and/or sketch what they see if they have developed these skills.  As they become older and develop more learning skills what can be achieved as independent learners obviously becomes more complex.

Tom was thrilled when he recently observed at close quarters a year 5 student write a quatrain format poem about Emperor Penguins, then search the net for an appropriate picture, positioning it under the poem, followed by referencing the source of the picture back to the URL from which it had been sourced.  Already this youngster was sensitive to the notion of sourcing information.  Her quick and accurate computer skills blew Tom’s mind.  And so on into the assignments of the secondary school years.

As part of teacher in-service within a school Tom felt that it was worthwhile for the participants to discuss the sets of skills that were needed for independent learning for age appropriate levels.  An effective prescribed curriculum should and usually does contain such skills as learning outcomes. He was concerned that students never be set tasks that were beyond them thus leading to frustrations and even a loss of confidence. He made special mention of skills with calculators and computers as well as reiterating the basics of being able to read and write as noted in the opening paragraph above.

Tom suggested that it was likely the Panthers would be straining at the leash to carry out independent learning tasks.  Teachers could well utilise this desire setting the Panthers loose on an assignment enabling more time to be spent on direct teaching with the Jaguars and especially the Leopards in classes where students were a heterogeneous group in terms of general ability.  This would be more relevant at primary school level where no cross setting was in place.

Setting projects to be done at home was an area of concern for Tom.  It is well known that the parents do a lot of the work just to get the task done and this defeats the purpose.  This did not preclude the parents from helping.  Tom knew that teachers would need to constructively educate parents about relevant contributions that they could make.  Tom recalled that one of his teenage sons was tasked to write a poem.  He came to Tom for help.  Tom decided to also write a poem and with tongue in cheek sent it off with his son.  The teacher marked Tom’s poem and enjoyed the joke. This set Tom to musing about one of his pet dislikes, homework.

Apart from a parent hearing their young child read and assisting with projects within teacher guidelines as described above, Tom was totally opposed to homework for primary school students.  He was reminded that the French had recently banned it in government primary schools.  He accepted that at secondary school level there would be a gradual increase in students needing to do school work outside school hours.

He was firm in his view that teachers needed to educate their secondary students on the difference between homework and study.  Homework was the completion of work that had not been finished in class time.  Tom knew that effective teachers motivated their students to get as much done in class time as possible, keeping on task and thus minimising homework.  Effective teachers also pointedly educated the students in how to study.  He described study as students organising the work for a particular topic and spending some time learning the facts, practising the processes, writing the paragraphs and so on in readiness for tests and/or exams.  He was aware that until students accepted that some facts or processes just had to be learned by heart so that they could be recalled or replicated easily, they would struggle.  This principle was relevant across a range of subjects for example mathematics and chemistry.

At the risk of being branded old-fashioned Tom had something to say about the oft heard statement in schools that students had to be responsible for their own learning.  He indicated that this view needed to be discussed in teacher in-service so that a balance would be agreed to between the role of direct teaching and independent learning.  He knew that no effective teacher would shy away from necessary constructive supervision of each student’s output.  In crude old fashioned parlance Tom chuckled as he used the term teacher marking of student output.

He knew that effective teachers constantly used over-the-shoulder supervision in class time as the students completed tasks such as writing, sketching, mathematical calculating in their notebooks, pads or on their tablets.  He would not resile from the need to have students as soon as possible understand that what they presented on the paper or the tablet was for an audience, namely their teacher.  If the teacher could not decipher what was written because of poor spelling, handwriting or figuring then something had to change.  He was particularly fussed about accurate setting out of mathematical algorithms.  He advocated that these setting out standards be set firmly but constructively.  He mused about teachers who kept samples of work for each student that displayed the level the teacher desired.  When a student strayed there would be a positive discussion about the sample that was stored by the teacher :  a resetting of standards if you will.  There might even be a rewrite of a part of the current work so that the student could display the standards required.  It was a very positive process that worked.

At the risk of sounding even more old-fashioned Tom advocated that part of the over-the-shoulder supervision should find the teacher signing off and dating on each page of student work.  As a student consistently reached the desired standards the teacher supervision could decrease, especially for secondary students.  Tom became distressed when he saw student output from year 12 secondary students where there had been no obvious overt teacher supervision such as signing the page and the output was a mish mash with no regard by the students for any audience, including themselves when they might need to carry out revision study.  At year 12 level the oft used teacher defence was that these students were old enough to be responsible for their output.  Tom felt it was up to the teacher to know when to draw back from the close supervision.

At primary school level Tom was aware that students are often allowed to mark their own output, for example mathematical algorithms.  Without the teacher over-the-shoulder supervision described above this can be disastrous. He was reminded of a teacher of a middle primary class who let the students mark a lot of the own mathematics algorithms without much checking by that teacher.  The result was students marking as correct many incorrect algorithms. For Tom even one class doing this was one class too many.  Fortunately Tom had great faith in the professionalism of the greater mass of teachers and this continued to give him comfort.  Teacher positive feedback through such over-the-shoulder supervision usually lifted the self-esteem of students.

It seemed to Tom that this might be the place in his treatise to discuss the notion of student laziness.  He knew that it would be very rare that laziness as an accusation would appear in the reports to parents from contemporary schools.  However he was aware that teachers being human could not help having thoughts about a student’s lack of application that could be ruled as laziness.  Tom of course knew that it was useless to brand students as lazy.  If their application was suspect then it was up to the school to find out why and resolve the issue.  A student might appear to be lazy but it could be a symptom of many situations such as:

…….poor teaching, where the teacher was under prepared and offered learning experiences that were not very appealing to the students. It might even be the way the teacher communicated with the students including not listening enough to their inputs.
……the student was experiencing an unsettled home life for a multitude of reasons;
……the student was experiencing playground bullying;
……the student was feeling unwell.


*************

Now Tom began to sharpen his focus on to academic learning.





May the Force be with you!


GD


Tuesday 11 July 2017

Some insights into my book on School Effectiveness

I provide these insights so that any excerpts from my book that I post on this blog may be better understood.  The book is small and practical and may never be published.  I just enjoy writing it to keep me in touch with a profession I loved and continue to love.  I am not spruiking potential sales of the book as it is still in draft form and I may never publish it. I just hope that my practical experiences as an educator may spark some ideas and assist any readers in their work as educators.  I enjoy talking with practising educators about how it is all going out there in school land.  I also enjoy chats with colleagues with whom I worked during my career days.  If you want to chat post some comments.


*************

The insights: 

Tom is a revered retired educator who is narrating to me as the recorder of his ideas on what makes an effective school.  We are on Tom's launch which is moored at a beautiful spot on our local river.  Corny hey, but it just made me feel that this was the way to present the credentialed academic yet highly practical educator talking straight to any reader.  The anticipated audience is school principals and teachers.  I did it this way because I am a bit fed upon with some of the jargon of educational administrative theory.  One more paradigm and I'm out of here.  This is not a denial of the value of evidence based research into education : far from it.

The book is focused on primary/elementary and secondary/high school students in the main stream of the schools. Tom recognises the brilliant work of the special school teachers who educate those with severe cerebral palsy, Downs Syndrome, blindness, hearing loss and various multi-disability scenarios but leaves this as a topic for another time.

Within the main stream he identifies from his practical experience three broad groups of students which he describes as follows:

The Panthers who proceed rapidly to master the learning outcomes of the prescribed curriculum for their age/grade in less than an academic year and need extension.  A small proportion of this group would be classified as academically 'gifted'.
The Jaguars who proceed to master the learning outcomes of the prescribed curriculum for their age/grade taking the whole academic year.   Tom doggedly resists any terms like 'average' student as he finds such labels rather useless.
The Leopards who proceed to master only a proportion of the learning outcomes of the prescribed curriculum for their age/grade during the academic year.

Primary/elementary school teachers would identify with these groups.  They soon show up in each new school intake and the skilled junior school teachers are frequently found to be teaching to these three groups specifically, especially for the development of reading and writing skills.  Cross setting can be used but in Tom's experience this is not common in the junior school grades and he would avoid it until the later years of upper primary or early secondary schooling.

You will probably find the labels a bit corny but there you go that is how Tom is.

In the book Tom refers to the Australian National Curriculum (ANC) which can easily be found on the internet if any reader feels the need for this detail.

Trust this explanation helps.  I am uncertain how much of the book's content will be revealed in my posts as they do not follow a logical sequence overall.  We'll see what comes up.


May the Force be with you!


GD










Continuity with my post of 10 July 2017 - School Effectiveness Criterion #3

In my post of 10/07/2017 I hinted at the next School Effectiveness Criterion.  Here it is as quoted from my book"


"Criterion #3  My Teacher(s) Talk To Me Personally Each Week (Aligns with SDP element #10)

Tom firmly believed that each student deserved each week a reasonable amount of the teacher’s one to one contact in a positive manner.  He wanted teachers to weekly or fortnightly, depending on how many students they contacted each week, to have a quiet introspective time to reflect on the frequency and quality of the contact they had made with each student.  This way no student should fall through the cracks unnoticed. For secondary teachers who had weekly contact with large student numbers fortnightly was more realistic.  Another alternative was for them to review weekly their contacts for half the number of students with whom they had contact each week.

A teacher could easily have a photo of each student on their computer and date the introspective time and type in a comment or two about the student.  It is always assumed that the computer is as protected as it can be against outside intruders.  Student privacy is vital.  In the past this process was based on teachers having a card for each student and Tom mused that maybe this was still a safer way to go in terms of student privacy.

This introspective time not only allows the teacher to reflect on the contacts being made but on the whole student and how they have generally been coping and presenting in terms of a sense of their wellbeing.

At a more general level Tom knew that effective teachers did not allow familiarity to damage the relationships they had with students.  Such teachers ensured that they created a subtle distance from students.   At upper secondary level the very best teachers were able to develop a mature adult to young adult level of communication where it was obvious to the students that their emerging independence as young adults was respected.  Tom had noted that some teachers made social media contacts with students such as on Facebook.  He was adamant that this should be avoided at all costs.

Within the context of having assured student general wellbeing Tom was ready to contemplate the core reason for students being at school, the academic learning program.

“Are you ready for a bite of lunch?”  Tom inquired.  “I’m feeing peckish,” I replied, “so let’s do it”.  We went into the galley and Tom put on water to boil for the pasta.  It was to be a bolognaise lunch with a couple of James Boag light stubbies as we waited for the water to boil and the sauce to heat up.  We chatted about the past footy season with me being a West Coast Eagle’s tragic and Tom a Docker’s tragic.  We took an hour over lunch and then settled again to proceed with the task in hand. We moved on to school effective criterion #4 as perceived by Tom in his priority listing."

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Criterion #3 might seem to be a small thing to do but I believe it is vital.  Students need to feel that their teacher(s) are communicating with them at a personal level.



May the Force be with you!

GD