He turned now to the vital
in-service in which teachers work together to interpret the various
syllabuses. In a large Primary school
teachers of say the three year 4 classes could be grouped together to have the
discussions. However Tom favoured groupings of teachers as follows:
Teachers of years 5 and 6 classes
(upper primary);
Teachers of years 3 and 4 classes
(middle primary);
Teachers of years 1 and 2 classes
(junior primary);
Teachers of the early childhood
classes, such as pre-primary (Foundation).
These groupings would need to be
adjusted the smaller the school. Very
small schools might have to join larger mentor schools for such in-service opportunities.
Focus for Primary School Teacher discussions about the
English syllabus
The discussion groups would scan
across the prescribed learning outcomes in the English Syllabus of the ANC under
the headings Language, Literature and Literacy (ANC English syllabus version 8). They would look at the elaborated detail of
each prescribed outcome and:
·
…talk about what it
means with such discussion being very short, almost a nod when the meaning of
the outcome is instantly clear;
·
…simplify the meaning of
a prescribed outcome if they decided this to be necessary;
·
…decide whether it is an
essential prerequisite to future new learning and mark it as such;
·
…decide what mastery
looked like if the learning outcome was deemed a prerequisite as described
above;
·
...highlight learning
outcomes that were basic to becoming a literate person.
From this process the English
syllabus would be ready for teacher planning of the learning experiences of
their students. It would also be ready for the transposing of the learning
outcomes into the eventual student reports to be periodically sent to parents. Appendix
? See below the blue font
There would then be discussion about
more general items in respect of the teaching and learning of English that
would become part of an English school policy document. The sort of statements that would comprise
the school’s English policy area as follows:
·
English will be taught
in the student’s general class, which contains a full range of learning
abilities Panthers, Jaguars and Leopards.
There will be no cross setting for English nor will there be exiting
from the general class for so called remedial teaching. The school does not perceive terms such as
“remedial” and “being behind” as useful.
The school believes that given best practice teaching each student is
learning at a pace dependent on how they are as a whole person based on all the
factors affecting their lives at the time.
·
Student attainment of
the prescribed English syllabus learning outcomes would be assessed according
to the school’s assessment policies.
Mastery of prerequisites would be assessed over the number of relevant
spaced assessments needed for each student to show mastery.
·
NAPLAN (see Appendix ?)
testing would be one part of the assessment program in English, complementing the
assessment of the day to day learning program. (NAPLAN was part of a previous post)
·
There will be a teacher
commitment to over-the-shoulder supervision of each student’s written
output. Students would be taught that
what they committed to paper was for an audience and therefore needed to be
legible. This commitment by the teachers required an active movement by them in
and around the classroom advising, congratulating as the written work was
produced. This was to have a closure of
the teacher signing and dating each page before a new one was commenced.
·
A commitment will be
made not to overemphasise learning to write text as creative writing where this
was causing major difficulties for the Leopards in mastering basic skills that
would contribute to their functional literacy.
·
Teachers will commit to
being effective listeners for student input and questioning, creating a balance
that did not allow for an overemphasis on teachers talking at students.
·
At the commencement of a
new school year the teachers will have the final report for each student for
English from the previous year as a point of reference for planning the English
learning for each student for the new year.
This is a commitment to continuity of learning for each student as they
move across the school years.
·
Reporting to parents
will provide detailed information on mastery of the prescribed learning
outcomes of the ANC for English that were highlighted as prerequisites for new
learning to come (see Appendix ?).
·
Parents will be able to
view their student offspring English files at arranged times during the year to
enable them to obtain more insights into the detail of the English learning
experienced by the students.
·
Parents will be informed
of the “no gaps” mastery approach. This
will be reinforced in the preamble to the school reports to parents about
student progress.
·
Parents will also be
assured by the school, that should their student child begin to have unusual
and apparently insurmountable learning difficulties they would be notified
immediately and solutions would be sought.
·
Parents will be
encouraged to peruse the English syllabus on the appropriate website. They will
be informed that the English syllabus of the ANC contains a satisfactory
balance between a literacy approach and use of basic pedagogy such as phonics.
·
Parents will be
encouraged to peruse the school’s English policy on the school’s website.
Tom felt that the in-service process
described above ensured that each teacher had every opportunity to enter their classrooms
with a shared interpretation of the details of the English syllabus and to have
contributed to the school’s English policy.
Tom was aware not to overburden
parents with too much reading of complex school reports. He also factored in a concern for the
workloads of teachers in compiling these reports. In relation to this latter concern he believed
that in this digital age reports could be more detailed.
Reporting for English
In writing his treatise on school
effectiveness he decided that for F - 10 English each report would contain a
list of the syllabus learning outcomes or content that were covered for the
reporting period and deemed to be prerequisites for new learning to come. Alongside each prerequisite learning outcome
columns would be provided for an assessment of the student’s progress. Tom knew that this was a reading challenge
for parents but was determined that they should have the opportunity to see what
their child knows, understands and can do in English. He was also reassured that this approach
would provide insights into the child’s development of functional literacy.
Tom’s study of the ANC English
syllabus revealed content/learning outcomes that were very general and need not
be deemed prerequisites for learning to come. For example in the Foundation Year
English syllabus there were learning outcomes such as:
· Understand that English
is one of many languages spoken in Australia and that different languages may
be spoken by family, classmates and community.
Such an outcome could be achieved over the many years of schooling
and was, Tom considered, not a prerequisite to new learning to come. It was an outcome that was not conducive to
the “mastery” no gaps approach. It was
an outcome that would be of general interest to parents but would not carry the
weight of outcomes that were about learning to read, write, listen and speak
effectively, the outcomes that parents were anxious to know about.
Again in the ANC Foundation English syllabus (version 8.0) Tom noted outcomes as
follows:
· learning
that written text in Standard Australian English has conventions about words,
spaces between words, layout on the page and consistent spelling because it has
to communicate when the speaker/writer is not present
· Understand that
punctuation is a feature of written text different from letters; recognise how capital letters are
used for names, and that capital letters and full stops signal the beginning
and end of sentences
· learning
about print: direction of print and return sweep, spaces between words
· Recognise that sentences
are key units for expressing ideas
· Recognise and generate
rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables
and sounds (phonemes) in spoken word
·
Recognise and name all upper and lower case letters (graphemes)
and know the most common sound that each letter represents
· knowing
how to write some high-frequency words recognised in shared texts and texts
being read independently, for example ‘and’, ‘my’, ‘is’, ‘the’ and ‘went’
· breaking
words into onset and rime, noticing words that share the same pattern, for
example ‘p-at’, ‘b-at’
In the above outcomes
parents would be able to identify writing, reading and speaking and these are
the learning they want to know about.
These would be the sorts of outcomes that would feature in the reports
to parent as follows:
Foundation English
|
Not Assessed
|
Moving Towards
|
Almost Mastered
|
Mastered
|
Extended
|
Writing and Reading
|
|||||
Understand that punctuation is a feature of
written text different from letters; recognise how capital letters
are used for names, and that capital letters and full stops signal the
beginning and end of sentences
|
|||||
…learning about print: direction of print
and return sweep, spaces between words
|
|||||
Recognise and generate rhyming
words, alliteration patterns, syllables and sounds (phonemes) in
spoken word
|
|||||
Listening and Speaking
|
|||||
Share feelings and thoughts about the events and characters in
texts
|
|||||
…reciting rhymes with actions
|
|||||
Viewing
|
|||||
…and so on
|
|||||
…and so on
|
|||||
Teacher Comments:
|
|||||
Teachers plan a set of learning
experiences that they will present to their students including the
content/learning outcomes that these learning experiences will enable the
students to achieve. Over a term or a
semester there will be many sets of learning experiences out of which a list of
the prerequisite content/learning outcomes will be made ready to appear in the
term or semester report in the format above.
Now for the Foundation Year all
students, Panthers, Jaguars and Leopards will be attempting to achieve all the
content/learning outcomes prescribed in the ANC syllabus. By the end of the academic year the Panthers
and Jaguars will have achieved all the content/learning outcomes prescribed in
the ANC syllabus. The Leopards will have
only achieved some of them.
When the Foundation Year is over
the Leopards will move into year 1 and their new class teacher will need to
peruse their reports to see what prerequisites from the Foundation Year are
still outstanding. The teacher will need to provide learning experiences to
allow these prerequisites to be achieved otherwise there could be gaps in the
Leopards’ learning. This teacher will
also need to include in her reports to parents an extra column in the report
table for the Foundation Year prerequisites still being worked on in year 1. So
the report table would look like:
Foundation English
|
Year 1 English
|
Not Assessed
|
Moving Towards
|
Almost Mastered
|
Mastered
|
Extended
|
Writing and Reading
|
||||||
Understand that punctuation is a feature of
written text different from letters; recognise how capital letters
are used for names, and that capital letters and full stops signal the
beginning and end of sentences
|
||||||
…learning about print: direction of print
and return sweep, spaces between words
|
||||||
Recognise and generate rhyming
words, alliteration patterns, syllables and sounds (phonemes) in
spoken word
|
||||||
Listening and Speaking
|
||||||
…and so on
|
||||||
…and so on
|
||||||
Viewing
|
||||||
…and so on
|
||||||
…and so on
|
||||||
Writing and Reading
|
||||||
Listening and Speaking
|
||||||
Viewing
|
||||||
Teacher Comments:
|
||||||
