Searching ......
Ideas and tools for using in the English classroom
Software for learningThis enabling e-Learning section contains Snapshots of Learning; these snapshots are classroom examples demonstrating the effective integration of digital technologies in learning and teaching to raise student learning outcomes.
Noodle ToolsThis site will guide you on how to conduct academic research on the Internet. Fill in the short form, and you will be provided with a research strategy. For every question, you can check any number of boxes (or none)
Online NewspapersThe online newspaper directory for the world, this site features thousands of international newspapers.
Tearaway OnlineNews, music, gaming, arts, videos, youth issues, sport, technology, travel, opportunities and mad giveaways... all created for NZ youth, by NZ youth.
12 TaongaFrom the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre, biographies and a poetry reading from Julia Allen, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Riemke Ensing, Janet Frame, Rob Jackaman, Olivia Macassey, Jenny Powell-Chalmers, L E Scott, Bill Sewell, Apirana Taylor, and Richard von Sturmer. Levels 5–8
TroutAn online journal of arts & literature from Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands
Life in Elizabethan EnglandTitled a "compendium of common knowledge", the site includes information on money, games, fashion, children, household management, education, occupations, and more.
Teaching ShakespeareFrom the Folger Shakespeare Library, this site has a bulletin board for teachers and a large archive of Shakespeare lesson plans, including introductions to Shakespeare, film lessons, interactive media lessons, and lessons on individual plays.
Writers in SchoolsOrganised by Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, this explains how to get writers to visit your school.
BBC Skillwise – Planning Your WritingThis site has a range of fact sheets on how to help students plan and organise their ideas for writing, including printable organisers. Students can also be a virtual traveller and listen to an audio and then choose a method to plan a travel diary.
ReadWriteThinkReadWriteThink is an online resource that contains lessons, interactive activities, printables, and an app to help kids improve their reading and writing skills
Arts Online - Drama Resources The Arts Online website provides a glossary, achievement objectives, resources, and a glossary for drama.
New Zealand Schools DebatingFrom the New Zealand Schools Debating Council, this site contains details and contacts for regional and national competitions, along with resources to support debating.
Exploring Visual LanguageA framework for exploring visual language in your classroom from the Exploring Language.
Audio Visual ArchivesThe audio visual section of Archives New Zealand. Here you are able to search through the core National Film Unit (NFU) collection as well as find out about preservation work and the history and life of the film unit.
Ngā Taonga Sound and VisionNgā Taonga Sound & Vision is the New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero. As well as archival footage, Ngā Taonga also houses Education resources.
NZ On ScreenA catalogue of New Zealand film, television and documentaries, some grouped thematically, along with biographies of some of New Zealand's screen talent.
The Fundamentals of Critical Reading and Effective WritingThis site shows how to recognise what a text says, what a text does, and what a text means by analysing choices of content, language, and structure. It shows what to look for and how to think about what you find.
New Zealand research relevant to the English classroom.
NMSSA English 2019: Writing for an audience (published June 2021)This report is designed to support the teaching of English in primary and intermediate classrooms, focusing on writing for different purposes within the creating meaning strand of the English learning area. It draws on insights from the assessment of the English learning area by the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) in 2019.
NMSSA 2019 English: Multimodal texts and critical literacy (published June 2021)This report is designed to support the teaching of English in primary and intermediate classrooms, focusing on critical literacy and working with multimodal texts within the making meaning strand of the English learning area. It draws on insights generated from the assessment of the English learning area by NMSSA in 2019.
PISA 2018: Reading in New Zealand – Reading achievement and experiences of 15-year-olds (December 2019)This report summarises the PISA 2018 reading achievement story in NZ and explores major contributors to student success in reading literacy, such as students’ reading habits and reading strategies, instructional methods and opportunities students are given to develop as readers, as well as digital reading practices.
He Whakaaro: How can teachers and whānau effectively teach and support reading? (December 2019)This report is mainly based on major meta-analyses that have been conducted on how to teach reading, as well as some literature reviews and individual studies.
Reading literacy instruction in English-language countries: similarities and differences (published August 2019)Using data from PIRLS 2016, this paper presents a comparison of the instructional practices used by teachers in English-language countries and jurisdictions when teaching reading comprehension, drawing attention to the similarities and differences across them.
NCEA Observational Studies (published June 2019)In 2018 the government initiated Education Conversation - Kōrero Mātauranga to examine the effectiveness of our education system. A review of NCEA was included in that programme. The Ministry partnered with ERO to carry out research on the use of NCEA as an assessment and qualification tool and how its use impacted five particular aspects: curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment strategies, resourcing, and student wellbeing.
Keeping children engaged and achieving in writing (published June 2019)This report shares some of the strategies and approaches used by schools who had focused on improving achievement in writing. It also shares some simple strategies used in classrooms where achievement in writing had been accelerated.
PIRLS 2016: Schools and School Climate for Learning (published May 2019)PIRLS is an international research study designed to measure trends in the reading literacy achievement of middle primary school students every five years. PIRLS 2016 was the fourth cycle and was implemented in late 2015 and early 2016.
Massey University Early Literacy Research Project (published February 2018)The purpose of this longitudinal research project was to improve the literacy outcomes of new entrant children during, and beyond, their first year of school.
Keeping children engaged and achieving through rich curriculum inquiries (published 2018)This Education Review Office (ERO) report is one of a series of reports on teaching strategies that work. We asked leaders in each school what they saw as the reasons for their school's positive achievement trajectory and then investigated the teaching strategies that had been implemented, and the outcomes. This report shares some of the strategies and approaches used by schools that had focused on improving achievement through rich curriculum inquiries. It also shares some of the simple strategies used in classrooms where the inquiries had positively contributed to raising achievement in literacy and/or mathematics.
Teaching strategies that work – Reading (published 2018)This resource is the third in a series of reports derived from a national study of teaching approaches and strategies used in schools where there has been a significant increase in the number of students at or above the expected level in the upper primary school years (Years 5 to 8).
Understanding student attainment and progress (published 2018)This paper describes why it is important for educators to understand and respond to both progress and achievement to enable children to maximise their potential. It summarises results from a new research dataset compiled by the Ministry of Education to illustrate the different insights that can be gained when looking at achievement relative to progress.
Achievement and progress in mathematics, reading and writing in primary schooling (published 2018)Analysis of e-asTTle assessment data, 2011 to 2016. In order to support student learning it is important to continually improve our understanding of student achievement and progress. This project makes use of existing data to contribute to our current knowledge of student achievement and progress.
Schools have different structures and resources, and unique student and teacher learning needs. Therefore, there can never be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ professional development model that will be effective in all secondary schools.
It is important that there is a person or team with designated responsibility for leading literacy in your school. Being a Literacy Leader in a secondary school is a challenging and pivotal leadership position.
Key tasks a Literacy Leader might undertake include:
The principal and senior management team have a critical role to play in any school-wide professional learning intervention.
The Best Evidence Synthesis of School Leadership (Robinson, Hohepa & Lloyd, 2007) identified that leaders ‘promoting and participating in teacher learning and development’ can have a large educationally significant effect on student outcomes. No intervention can be effective without strong and active senior management support.
Key roles for the Principal and Senior Management Team include:
Principal leadership is a key to success. While this link relates to Principals’ leadership in implementing NZC, it is highly relevant to literacy.
It is useful for Literacy Leaders to have access to people outside the school who have expertise in literacy and who can offer alternative viewpoints. You may be able to get help from your local School Support Service or other provider, or join a professional development programme such as the Secondary Literacy Project.
Other ways to enlist external expertise include:
There is no single model of professional development that is suitable for all secondary schools. Much will depend on the existing culture and organisation of professional development in your school.
School-wide level
While whole-staff workshops alone are seldom sufficient to positively change teacher practice, they are an important part of any school-wide professional development intervention.
Such meetings can send a powerful message that literacy is highly valued in the school and that all teachers are expected to be effective teachers of literacy. They are also an opportunity to present and discuss analyses of school-wide student achievement data and evidence about teaching.
Some schools use whole-staff meetings to promote common literacy approaches that ensure students get consistent messages about literacy in all learning areas.
Approaches would be selected on the basis of identified student learning needs and might include the following:
Some literacy leaders regularly include literacy tips or examples of easy-to-use literacy activities during staff briefings. These can help remind teachers of the ongoing literacy focus and be a useful addition to more in-depth PD.
One approach that some secondary schools have found effective when they begin a literacy intervention is to do some more intensive work with a smaller ‘focus group’ of strategically selected teachers.
It is useful for focus groups to have a natural unit of organisation – something the teachers all have in common already. Two ways to group focus teachers are by:
Advantages of the common-class approach are that:
One limitation of the common-class approach is that teachers may need additional support to apply learning to their specialist subject areas. For this reason it may be best to take a two-pronged approach. The diagram below illustrates a model that combines a common-class with a subject-specific focus.
In this model, all the teachers of 10AL meet to examine student achievement data, carry out collaborative inquiry, identify common learning needs, and trial common teaching approaches to address common needs.
10AL’s mathematics teacher also regularly meets with other mathematics teachers so they can focus on specific issues of literacy in mathematics such as teaching students to abstract relevant information from word problems with an unfamiliar context.
Ideally you would also be able to work with individual teachers in their classrooms to:
In an effective professional development programme teachers will be provided with a variety of professional learning activities such as:
Whatever professional learning activities you decide to include it will be essential to:
Teachers often demonstrate an appetite for easy-to-prepare practical teaching activities they can use with their classes tomorrow. One risk is that teachers use potentially useful activities in inappropriate and unhelpful ways. Therefore, it is important that teachers see how new activities fit in the inquiry framework:
Ki te Aotūroa is a set of learning materials for people like you who support their professional learning and development of classroom teachers.
Robinson, V., Hohepa, M., & Lloyd, C. (2009). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why best evidence synthesis. Wellington: Ministry of Education.
Timperley, H. (2008). Teacher professional learning and development. Educational Practice Series – 18. International Academy of Education & International Bureau of Education Paris. UNESCO.
Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development: Best evidence synthesis iteration (BES). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.
« Previous Next » 1... 1191 1192 1193 1194 1195 1196 1197 1198 1199 1200 1201 1202 1203 1204 ...1214
