Archive for category english
NAPLAN is evil
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, politics, university on April 11, 2011
How, in just a sniff of time in just one lecture, am I going to be able to convey to my preservice teachers all of the evil in schooling that has come from NAPLAN testing?
I think I’ll start with this news article from today:
Parents of about 12 students in Year Nine at Miami State High School were asked last week to sign a waiver so their children did not sit the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy) tests, to avoid stressing the teenagers.
The parents of one student who refused to withdraw their son were told they were the only ones not to sign the form, out of those contacted by the school .
When Alexandra Fox demanded her son Mathew, 13, sit the NAPLAN tests, she was told that Mathew was quite good at English so could sit those tests, but he was not as strong in maths so she should sign the waiver for those tests.
Mathew’s father, Anthony Jarrah, said his son had no medical condition or diagnosed learning difficulty that would require his exemption from the tests.
“He’s a normal kid, has no learning difficulties or anything. He’s just one of those kids who takes a bit longer to grasp things,” he said. “They’re not educating kids, they’re not doing their best.
“He’s already 13 and it’s not that long before he’s out of school. All they want to do is to hide him all through high school like they did in primary, then once he leaves school he’s not their problem anymore.”
(Ferrari, ‘School uges students to skip tests’ in The Australian, March 11, 2011)
Is it time yet to make the call? Seriously, the (yes, very valid, very real ‘if done properly’) diagnostic function of the NAPLAN test is being compromised so much here.
Your performance will only make our school look bad.
What a delightful message to send to the students of today.
…and community…another vital ‘C’!
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, reflections, university on April 4, 2011
So if we are to connect, collaborate and create in a way that
fosters social justice
then as well as adding ‘critical literacy’ to the C-list, ought not we also add
community?
The FOUR C’s
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, reflections, research, technology, university on March 30, 2011
We edu-tweeters often use the catchphrase ‘connect, collaborate, create’ to signal our pedagogical perspective.
But…what about this really important fourth C:
CRITICAL?
Surely this must become another essential C-word?
Learning from: Mary Poppins
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, university on March 28, 2011
I’ve been keeping an eye out for a range of texts (‘literary’ and ‘pop culture’) that I can use in lessons with preservice English teachers. I’m looking for things that are interesting texts in their own right, as well as can shed some light on an important aspect of secondary education or English curriculum.
My find for today is: Mary Poppins (1964)
In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun –
you find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game!
An uplifting message and one which bears a clear connection to Games Based Learning.
There are certainly conflicting discourses in the song though – I’d love to take an extract from 1984 to compare and contrast here, the one where Orwell describes how the proles are kept in line through pop music and the lottery…
‘a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’ (eek!?)
Another one of my favourite songs from the movie (and no, I’m not generally a fan of musicals) and another that I think bears exploration is the Chiminey Sweep song. I’ll let you do your own reading of that one!
Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when
I shake ‘ands with you
Or blow me a kiss
And that’s lucky tooNow as the ladder of life
‘As been strung
You may think a sweep’s
On the bottommost rungThough I spends me time
In the ashes and smoke
In this ‘ole wide world
There’s no ‘appier blokeUp where the smoke is
All billered and curled
‘Tween pavement and stars
Is the chimney sweep worldWhen the’s ‘ardly no day
Nor ‘ardly no night
There’s things ‘alf in shadow
And ‘alf way in light
On the roof tops of London
Coo, what a sight!I choose me bristles with pride
Yes, I do
A broom for the shaft
And a broom for the flumeThough I’m covered with soot
From me ‘ead to me toes
A sweep knows ‘e’s welcome
Wherever ‘e goesChim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee!
When you’re with a sweep
You’re in glad company…
Put your money where your mouth is
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, university on March 26, 2011
Stepping it up this week a bit in the ‘modelling-best-practice’ stakes…
It occured to me that as I am advocating the importance of studying texts and their traditions to…well basically, the development of human society as we know it, that I’m not doing enough of this in my own university classes.
Last week I got a real buzz relating the theoretical material in this unit to contemporary texts and practices, namely to the story of Terminator II and to the ‘Pirates vs Ninjas’ meme. So this week I am using another text as a way to relate to theory, this time going into even more depth.
I have chosen the film Pleasantville. I am going to use this film to explore ‘critical literacy’ and interrogate the resistance to critical reading of text in secondary English.
Yes I am.
Now, to construct the learning experiences.
In the lecture I am going to focus in on metalanguage, showing students how historical paradigms of English curriculum (skills, cultural heritage, personal growth, critical-cultural) have been revisioned in two more recent literacy frameworks that have had significant influence on contemporary English curriculum – Luke and Freebody’s ‘Four Resources’ model, and Green’s ‘Three Dimensions’ of literacy (which we have already been using at length). I’m also going to rock their world by showing them how subject-specific pedagogy relates to more general theories of pedagogy, such as the ‘Productive Pedagogies’ that are used here in QLD, as well as to theories of learning such as Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.
The two hour tutorial though. Hmmm.
My message in the coming weeks will be to embrace ‘workshops’ as well as individual and group ‘project based learning’ as alternative approaches to lesson organisation. I want them to start thinking about how we traditionally do “class” and what learning experiences are encouraged there. As I’m electing to ‘put my money where my mouth is’ this week I suppose I should give them a taste of this too…but what to do?
Perhaps I will split the two hours into a ‘workshop’ and a ‘project’. Will I have time for both? I’d like to also screen the first ~20 minutes of the film in class, giving me 30 minutes for the rest of the workshop.
That leaves ~50 minutes for students to complete a seperate project. But what?
I’ve been watching Bianca do this – I know I need to start with a driving question or challenge…
…
…and thus I am away to make coffee and have a think about this.
Ideas welcome x
The English Teacher – Visual Rep.
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, online tools, university on March 6, 2011
In my English Curriculum Studies classes this week students should all be bringing in a bag containing five items that they think symbolise what they want to be as an English teacher. This activity is supposed to help stimulate discussion about discourses and people’s different philosophies of teaching. I’m going to do the activity too – so far I have a couple of ideas, but in the meantime I thought I would post this collage that I recently made as a visual representation of English teachers/teaching:
It was made using polyvore.com a favourite site of mine where you can make digital collages using ‘clippings’ from images on other sites. If you’ve never seen it then go check out some of the sets I’ve collected that I think could relate to the school curriculum – I hope it gets you thinking!
Bookfuturism
Posted by kmcg2375 in books, english, technology on February 19, 2011
I was very interested late last year to learn the term bookfuturism.
And I think I may be a bookfuturist.
It was a link from Kirsty Burow that first put me onto this.
Kirsty declares herself a ‘bookfuturist and book lover’ in her Twitter bio, and her pro-digital musings were refreshing coming from someone in the publishing industry (UQP), most of whom I have found to be die-hard bookservatives.
‘Bookservatives’ and ‘technofuturists’ are pitted against each other in Tim Carmondy’s Bookfuturist Manifesto, the post that had first influenced Burow.
In light of this weeks big news story about Australian book stores Borders and Angus and Robertson going into receivership and the simplistic ‘video killed the radio star’ style beat up about how iPads and Kindles are essentially to blame for putting Tim Winton out of business (anyone else notice the journos struggle to find another popular Aussie author to cite?) it’s worth remembering that radio is still around. Why? Because people still want it…the same is the case with books. Books are not analogous to vinyl records, a technology made difficult to sustain as it requires a specific machine to play it. As long as people have eyes, the paperback will be a difficult technology to eradicate.
(By the way, is anyone else having a Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail kind of moment? When big book store chains take over the book buying market by using their size to buy big, slash prices, and force themselves right in front of our face in every major shopping mall, I do find it hard to muster sympathy when they are pushed right back out by that same market…)
This afternoon Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten has rejected calls for a review of Australia’s book importation regime, which is well and good for those arguing that this protects Australian authors. But where does this leave book lovers…and book futurists? For those who do delight in bookshop browsing, is it just a matter of time before the inability of industry to adapt to a BOOKS ARE ONLY THE BEGINNING climate of reading leads to more book store closures?
Publishers, readers, book sellers, authors, teachers, librarians…your thoughts?
Queer as folk: my ALEA conference paper
Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, education, english on January 30, 2011
Anyone who has attended the AATE/ALEA national conference in the last…well, many years, might have noticed this year that ALEA and AATE have gone separate conference ways – ALEA in July and AATE in December.
There are a range of practical reasons for this, but for me it highlights some common territory between English and Literacy teachers that has perhaps been assumed over the years. After all, when we go to these conferences aren’t the Literacy teachers invariably Primary school teachers? Are English teachers really Literacy teachers at all? To what extent to we belong ‘at each others conferences’?
So I have put in a proposal to deliver a 30 minute paper on the topic: Queer as folk: The English and Literacy teacher divide
The title purposefully invokes queer discourse in questioning the way we use labels in constructing our identity.
I’m hoping to stir up some controversy with this one – hope it gets accepted!
Teaching Inanimate Alice
Posted by kmcg2375 in english, technology on January 29, 2011
I was delighted today to discover that I have been featured as today’s iTeacher on the Inanimate Alice Facebook page 😀
(oh yeah…cool factor = one million!)
My use of Inanimate Alice as a text in the English classroom was part of a wider unit for junior high school on ‘Narrative’ where multimodality was also being introduced as a concept.
Last year I showed Episode 1 of Alice to my tutorial groups of pre-service English teachers. The quality of the text blew their mind. I chose to show it on a large screen and some students took turns at coming up to control the interactive parts of the story. At the end they spoke to the class about how they felt about the added layer of participation in the text – they enjoyed it, though some confessed they had mixed feelings about the text at first as my explanation had resounded with childhood memories of choose-your-own-adventure style books, a genre they had come to look upon as formulaic and contrived. All found Alice to be anything but.
Viewing the story as a class was a powerful way to communicate the potential of opening the English classroom to texts that shake up our notions of genre and text type (rather than rote teaching students how to classify forms and features). It also refocussed our attention on the powerful role of storytelling in life and left everyone feeling inspired to seek out ‘better texts’ and ‘more cutting-edge material’ for their future English lessons.
This year I’ll be showing Alice again, but in smaller groups this time for a more intimate experience. I’d love to hear from any teachers who have seen any of the Episodes – have you had a chance to use them in class at all? What potential does a text like this hold, do you think?
IFTE Conference Seminar 2011
Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, education, english, university on December 2, 2010
In April 2011 the International Federation for the Teaching of English is holding its triennial conference in Auckland, New Zealand.
I’ve proposed the following seminar – fingers crossed it’s something they want to see!
The English teacher-practitioner: Re-writing our role
This seminar will weave together two strands of reflection on the nature of English teachers’ work. On one hand the nature of assessment in English will be considered, with a critical exploration of the relationship between standardised assessment and teachers’ capacity to positively engage in providing formative feedback. A central question that participants will be asked to reflect on is ‘how can we reconceptualise our role as a co-practitioner in the classroom and consequently find more enjoyment in the marking process?’ The second line of reflection will be a recount of my own journey to seek an antidote to the processes of ‘school writing’ and recommendations for avenues that other English teachers can explore to stimulate their own creativity and willingness to see themselves as a practitioner as well as a teacher of others.
English teachers: would you want to come to this? If you came along, what would you be expecting/hoping to hear about?
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