This question was plaguing me as I lugged a huge box of resources from the English department across the school to the Science Lab where I teach English to class of Yr12 students. As my spinal column compressed itself under the weight of the resource box I thought that if teachers were meant to teach
Students in New Zealand are expected to be at Level 5 for writing by the end of Year 10. This series of posters helps to describe what Level 5 actually looks like. The posters support formative assessment practices by allowing students to identify what they need to do in order to move their writing to
Students often receive feedback telling them to ‘develop their ideas’, but they frequently have no idea how to do it. This series of posters is designed to flesh out PEEL – a popular acronym often used to help young writers support their ideas with evidence and explanation. This series of posters was created in order
A nark is a ‘betrayer of confidence’, an ‘informer’. Are teachers who phone home to report poor behaviour ‘narks’. I certainly didn’t feel like a nark when I phoned home about a truanting student, but the young chap helpfully put me straight. It got me thinking. If we accept that teacher / student relationships are essential
One of my main goals this year was to find better ways to establish and maintain close connections with whanau (families) in order to create a supportive environment for students. Home-school connections are strong in primary school, but significantly weaker in senior high school. As a parent myself, I know how important the home-school link
Assessment for learning strategies can sometimes be difficult to implement in the classroom, but Jennifer English’s blog post Trying to embed some simple formative assessment into my practice highlights how it can be done. Her comments about the use of the ‘no hands-up classroom’ and the importance of ‘thinking time’ encouraged me to post my
Not a lot it would seem. I have just finished marking over 75 writing portfolios each with two pieces of writing over 500 words long and needing to be scrutinized multiple times. It took me 15 hours and involved reading over 100,000 words. Was it a complete waste of my time? What bothers me is
The FOCUS lesson is the second phase of the instructional model I am attempting to use in my classroom. It follows on from the first phase: Experiential Engagement and is explained in The Formative Assessment Action Plan. A vital aspect of the teaching and learning cycle is providing FEED UP in order to to establish
The goal of experiential engagement is to hook students at the beginning of a unit or lesson in order to motivate them to want to learn. The idea is to set up an activity that allows learners to personally connect to the topic and find some authentic context. The concept is explained in more detail
My goal for 2016 is to effectively embed AFL (Assessment for learning) practices into my teaching. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the fact that AFL practices top the list of the most effective strategies to improve student learning and yet almost 20 years after the original research they are still not being implemented successfully in the majority
