Mark's Learning Log

We have just completed a whole pupil free day looking at our instructional practice on student writing. Anne Hammond, our resident literacy coach had us look at persuasive text for most of the morning: where you would find it, how it comes in different text forms [e.g. editorials, songs, advertising, and letters to the editor], its purpose, the social context surrounding the text and the possible world view of the author. She encouraged teachers to let go of the view that longer text pieces were better, that students needed time to practice and refine a particular piece, that in the gradual release of responsibility to students they needed to be able to select the text form and not be told to all write e.g. poems that rhyme and that the purpose was all important.  In the afternoon we looked at the place of spelling or word study. Anne took us through what I would term a constructivist process where after children had listed words with a particular sound from a text the teacher was reading and had grouped them according to some letter pattern they then developed a hypothesis or a rule. They went inquiring in other texts for words with the same sound and then regrouped and retested their original hypothesis. This appears to me a far more powerful practice than telling students a spelling rule and then giving examples from a text book to use the rule. We finished the day making some common commitments to each other to change our practice e.g. teach the craft of writing and not focus on the surface structure quite so much [lateral accountability] and wrote one personal goal for ourselves in our reflective journal. A good day.   

This week after our staff meeting I have been reflecting about the dialogue on what value we as teachers bring to the deeper learning our students need in the 21^st century. We watched a pod cast of Richard Elmore saying that in fact through the dominance of our literal recall tasks we are sucking the learning from the student not really engaging them at all – let alone challenging them to think analysis or synthesise.  Now granted that Elmore is giving an American perspective – I believe the work here at Elsternwick is different – our reading curriculum from an early age teaches children to comprehend, to bring their knowledge of the world to understand the text not just simply decode. Our inquiry focused curriculum also has a process that not only engages student’s prior knowledge but challenges them to apply their learning.  Perhaps some of our challenges lie in shifting the community thus school cultures in not hankering for the past when things look different from their own experiences.  

At this week’s leadership meeting I introduced John Hattie’s article on building teacher quality. We began talking as the instructional leaders of the school of our individual journeys to making a greater difference in student learning. Hattie explores this learning journey from novice to expert. The conversation turned to some key influences over the past few years and with some sense of relief and excitement they began to list some key instructional strategies our coaches: Anne Hammond and Kath Murdoch had supported them in learning. Two tips they shared that struck a chord with me were about proofreading in student writing [student writing being a focus for our school in 2008 / 2009] – when teaching students to proofread for spelling get them to start from the bottom of the page and work up [thus not focusing on the meaning] and when giving senior students feedback on writing [if its spelling focus] write sp in the column and get them to do the work, find the error and work out its correction – its about student ownership and work – remembering also that if the writing purpose is not bound for publication then don’t over correct – students take in small bits of information – focus and specific feedback on a few items rather than a page of red marks.   The team leaders then carried these thoughts forward when they presented at the annual parent information night – one using this quote  from Shelley Harwaynne (from the teacher’s college writing project in New York) “We let children paint their faces, swing around poles, blow bubbles, build cubby houses, go down the street in their ballet dress or superhero suit and we accept them as children. So when we look at children’s writing we must accept them as children and their writing as children’s writing.”

Thanks to John Connell from Cisco I came across this article on the testing business in America. Businesses make huge profits from selling tests to school districts or states as a result of the NCLB legislation and as it now appears even more money from the pre test materials. But boy oh boy can they get it wrong and the consequences well – as John said just read page 4 of the article if nothing else.

Watch out teachers and lets become the watchdogs for political policies that have high stakes testing as accountability .