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Build an effective private D wall

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Teaching for Growth

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Literacy

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Misconceptions About Appropriate Literacy Instruction for Young Children

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Literacy Daily-the blog of the International Literacy Association (ILA)-features education stories, teaching tips, book reviews, and more.

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Geoff masters

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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The decision to move NAPLAN online provides an opportunity to place less emphasis on comparing the performances of schools and more emphasis on supporting student learning.
An intriguing discrepancy has emerged between the performances of Australian secondary students in the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and their performances in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Since 2008, the average performance of Year 9 students on NAPLAN has remained relatively stable. But over the same period, the performances of 15 year olds in PISA have declined steadily. What are we to make of this?

One suggested explanation is that schools are more focused on improving their NAPLAN results than they are on PISA. According to this explanation, average scores on NAPLAN are being maintained because schools are responding to the publication and comparison of their NAPLAN results on the My School website, with PISA providing the more accurate picture of (downward) trends in literacy and numeracy levels.

This explanation has some support in international experience. Some states in the United States have seen improvements on state-wide tests that are used to hold schools accountable, with no parallel improvement in those states' performances on the sample-based, low-stakes National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The conclusion is that improvements on the state-based tests reflect 'score inflation', with NAEP providing the more accurate indication of trends over time.

A second explanation is that NAPLAN and PISA assess different skills. NAPLAN assesses basic literacy and numeracy skills and PISA assesses students' abilities to apply these skills to complex, real world problems. Under this explanation, for whatever reason, the basic skill levels of Australian secondary students are being maintained over time, but their abilities to apply these skills are in decline.

A third possibility is that both these explanations are correct: because schools are placing greater emphasis on the basic skills on which they are being publicly compared, performances on these skills are being maintained at the expense of the higher level skills assessed by PISA. If this is true, we may face twin challenges: significantly improving students' literacy and numeracy skills and placing less emphasis on comparing schools and more emphasis on improving learning.

The decision to move NAPLAN online may assist in addressing the first of these challenges. The introduction of computer adaptive tests that are better targeted on students' current skill levels should provide better information about where individuals are in their long-term literacy and numeracy development. This is desirable because it is now clear that students in the same year of school are widely dispersed in their skill levels. Some Year 9 students perform at the same level as some Year 5, and possibly some Year 3, students. Computer adaptive testing recognises that learning occurs on a continuum and so provides better information about where individuals are in their learning and for setting challenging personalised targets for further growth.

However, online computer adaptive testing is only a first step. A longer-term vision would uncouple NAPLAN tests and NAPLAN reporting from year levels entirely. In other words, there would be no such thing as a 'Year 3', 'Year 5', 'Year 7' or 'Year 9' test. Instead, a student's performance on NAPLAN tasks would result in a NAPLAN score as at present, together with a conclusion about the absolute proficiency level that the student had reached, regardless of their age or year level - for example, 'achieved Reading Band 8 and working towards Band 9'. By foregrounding the NAPLAN score scale and proficiency bands, NAPLAN would model and promote a growth mindset in assessment, an approach that follows naturally from recognition that learning occurs on a continuum and that a single year level test is inappropriate for most students. It would then be unnecessary to restrict NAPLAN testing to particular years of school.

An advantage of this approach is that it would provide a framework of proficiency levels against which all students could challenge themselves and monitor their progress, a little like the grades against which students monitor their progress in music. There would be explicit recognition that students in the same year of school are at different points in their learning and may be progressing at different rates. Individual students would attempt online assessments when they felt ready to demonstrate achievement of the next proficiency level, rather than in specified assessment periods. In this way, students may be encouraged to aim for progressively higher levels of literacy and numeracy and to take greater responsibility for monitoring their own progress. In contrast, national minimum standards tied to year levels do little to challenge all students to higher levels of achievement.

The monitoring of literacy and numeracy achievement against a set of absolute proficiency levels would require a shift in thinking on the part of students, teachers and parents who are used to interpreting test performances only in terms of year level expectations. Because the performances of all students would continue to be reported on the current NAPLAN score scale, it would still be possible to calculate year level averages, to show how students perform in relation to their year group, and to identify levels of proficiency that, ideally, all students should reach by particular times in their schooling. However, the primary focus in reporting NAPLAN results would be on the proficiency level an individual had reached and the progress they had made over time.

By shifting the focus of NAPLAN in this way, it also may be possible to downplay school comparisons based on year-level means (a statistic that is strongly correlated with students' socioeconomic backgrounds) and to make greater use of NAPLAN's ability to compare schools based on the value they add, reflected in the progress students make. Although, in general, encouraging comparisons and competition between schools is an ineffective route to better national performance.

The decision to move NAPLAN online provides a unique opportunity to shift the focus of assessment from common year-level tests and low national minimum standards to the monitoring of each student's progress against challenging personal targets. It also introduces an opportunity to place less emphasis on comparing schools and more emphasis on supporting learning. The reversal of Australia's long-term decline in PISA may depend on seizing these opportunities.

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The decision to move NAPLAN online provides an opportunity to place less emphasis on comparing the performances of schools and more emphasis on supporting student learning. An intriguing discrepancy has emerged between the performances of Australian secondary students in the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and their performances in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

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Using best teachers adaptive classrooms

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Towards an adaptive education system in Australia | Grattan Institute

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A conversation with School Education Program Director, Pete Goss. Australia's school education system is not fit for purpose, and we need to rethink the way we teach students, support teachers and run schools. To halt the decline, we should make the system more adaptive.

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One of the best articles for explaining Play-Based Learning.

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SARAH AIONO of Longworth Education suggests that a successful play-based learning environment requires a level of skill by teachers not easily understood by school management.

The use of play as a teaching and learning tool in the primary classroom is growing momentum in New Zealand. Teachers of children in years 1-3 are now recognising the need to respond to their students in a more developmentally appropriate manner at a time when more and more children are struggling to fit the mould that once was the traditional classroom.

Yet many of these teachers report a key barrier to effectively implementing a learning-through-play approach in their classroom to be that of their school management team and colleagues. Principals and senior managers question teachers on their ability to meet targets for identified at-risk learners, to report against the National Standards, to forward plan appropriately, and to respond to parents who air their concerns when faced with a child exclaiming that they went to school and 'played all day'.

The use of play as a pedagogical tool is misunderstood by those unfamiliar with the research base supporting its use in schools. For many managers, the first thought that comes to mind when a teacher announces the return to play in the classroom may be in fact some wild re-enactment of a Home Alone scene, while the classroom teacher sits in their office quietly checking their Facebook account. This could not be further from the truth.

The art of teaching through play requires skill and professional expertise often underutilised in our classroom teachers. Teaching and learning through play looks very different from the 'free play' images often flashing before the eyes of principals and parents alike. Teachers working within these environments must skilfully walk a fine line between teacher-directed activities and child-directed learning (Robinson & Aronica, 2015).

The strategic use of direct teaching is one key feature of a play-based learning environment and yet it is often abandoned first as teachers new to the pedagogy explore the concepts around child-directed play. Typically, teachers tend to swing to the opposite end of the pendulum, abandoning all routines and rules, and direct teaching. This 'unassisted' play amounts to the types of 'free play' many think of when the use of play in schools is described to them. Children engaged in play in this format do not typically make significant progress in their learning, as their exposure to new knowledge and skills is only limited to opportunities presented to them in their play by their peers, who often do not have a different knowledge set of their own (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011).

Yet, key to successful learning-through-play pedagogy is the balance a teacher provides between child-led play and the deliberate acts of teaching during the school day - knowing when to gift knowledge to students at the point of meaningful absorption and understanding and when to stay silent for fear of interrupting the magic of the play (Hirsh-Pasek & Galinkoff, 2011). The 'spray-and-walk-away' technique requires a high level of skill by teachers not easily understood by school management.

A second misunderstood strategy used within play-based settings is the art of provocation. Many teachers, when coming to terms with play being student-directed and student-chosen will then step back from any teacher-initiated activities whatsoever. The use of provocation allows a new set of eyes on an event, resource or phenomenon. It is also a useful tool to encourage children to explore areas of the curriculum they would not otherwise do so within their play (Johnson, 2015).

Teachers in a play-based learning environment must continually observe and reflect on the play before them, knowing when to introduce provocations that may serve to lift the cognitive and social skills being explored within the play itself while ensuring that they do not take over or commandeer the direction of the play at all. This collaborative learning relationship is far removed from the 'free-play' approaches and demands a knowledge of The New Zealand Curriculum and/or Te Whāriki that many classroom teachers do not have in the current teaching climate.

Traditionally classroom teachers establish clear achievement objectives and learning intentions focused around targeted areas of the curriculum. They assess pre-knowledge, teach to these intentions and then reassess post-unit. This allows teachers to teach 'to' the curriculum, managing the content and knowledge shared during the unit of work. Teaching through play requires teachers to draw on their observational skills and curriculum knowledge in order to identify the learning occurring within the children's play. Children, through their play, will naturally inquire about the world around them (Gray, 2013).

The New Zealand Curriculum provides a freedom for teachers to be able to connect the learning occurring in front of them with not only the learning areas but the key competencies, values and principles of this document. The challenge for teachers new to the use of play is to know what learning they are looking at within the play; to be able to correctly document this, analyse their observations against the curriculum document, and articulate the learning clearly and concisely to both parents and management alike.

This approach to the planning and assessment of play against the wider school curriculum is unfamiliar to many involved in the primary school sector and becomes a significant barrier between teachers wishing to implement the pedagogy and senior managers meeting their responsibilities of targets and documentation.

The process of embedding effective learning-through-play pedagogy within a primary school environment is challenging for both the classroom teacher and their senior managers. The significant knowledge and skill required by this approach takes time to grow. New Zealand teachers wishing to journey into play need the support from their managers to build their professional knowledge and capabilities as part of a structured approach to their new learning. This approach is far from simple to implement, and requires support through time, access to professional learning opportunities and networking with others on a similar path for these skills to grow.

However, it is not only the classroom teacher embarking on this learning journey into play. Senior managers, once classroom teachers themselves, also have challenges to overcome in their own knowledge base in order to be able to confidently support their teachers' classroom programmes. They require the same amount of time to research, comprehend and understand the practical application of the approach. Furthermore, often being the 'face' of the school community, they must feel confident in being able to field any questions or concerns by their parent community.

Senior managers must be able to distinguish successful learning-through-play classroom programmes from those of lesser quality, and to do this, they must first have a grasp on the principles and practices of the pedagogy. In their role as appraiser, they must be able to ensure the systems for documenting and reporting on learning in their schools not only meet the mandated requirements, but are also true to the evidence base that supports appropriate assessment of learning through play.

Within a school environment determined to embed play as a tool for curriculum delivery, it must be acknowledged that there is significant learning required of all parties involved. Teachers at the chalkface need to develop a high level of both knowledge and skill to successfully implement teaching and learning through play reflecting the evidence base underlying its use.

Managers need to be able to confidently identify the successful implementation of play in classrooms, identifying which is 'good' practice and which is not. They also need to be able to juggle the principles of play against the current climate of reporting and assessment requirements.

For this to result in a school climate achieving the desired outcomes of a learning-through-play approach, all players in the process must journey together. They must work as a team to embed the new knowledge gained in their professional learning and continue to communicate, without prejudice, about the rocky journey ahead. It is only then that play will become far less misunderstood.

References available on request.

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Education Review: New Zealand's Latest Education news on Teaching, Students, Schools, Learning, Collaboration, Special Education, Te Reo, Best Practice, Exchange Programmes, Leadership and Curriculum

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The use of play as a teaching and learning tool in the primary classroom is growing momentum in New Zealand. Teachers of children in years 1-3 are now recognising the need to respond to their students in a more developmentally appropriate manner at a time when more and more children are struggling to fit the mould that once was the traditional classroom.

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Supports smaller classes

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John Hattie admits that half of the Statistics in Visible Learning are wrong (Part 2)

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In an earlier post we discovered that John Hattie had admitted (quietly) that half of the Statistics in Visible Learning were incorrect. John Hattie uses two statistics in the book, the 'Effect Size' and the 'CLE'. All of the CLEs are wrong through-out the book. Now, I didn't really know why they were wrong, I...

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Robert Pianta (researcher USA on ECE) focus on interactions

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Project MUSE - Quality in Early Education Classrooms: Definitions, Gaps, and Systems

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Teachers' interactions with children can be significantly and systematically improved through targeted and sustained professional development. Yet efforts to improve the quality of such interactions at scale and to ensure that quality remains consistent from prekindergarten through third grade have so far been ineffectual.

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How the New Preschool is Crushing American Kids
No long term benefits of standrads based curric

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Today's young children are working more, but they're learning less.

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Info about NAplan, EC focus, progress model

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Adelle Faull, what qualities do individuals need to be a HQT?

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NSW quality teaching model

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Teaching and Leading for Quality in Australian Schools

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Teaching and Leading for Quality in Australian Schools

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UNSW in Aitsl Library

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Geoff Masters ACER

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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It is easy to be overwhelmed by data. And the situation is poised to become worse as new technologies enable the capture of increasingly detailed information about what takes place inside and outside classrooms.

Already there is talk not only of recording what students do, but also of capturing conversations, social interactions and even facial expressions.

Companies offer to analyse the 'big data sets' that schools can now generate with the promise of discovering what teachers may not already know. Whether this leads to important new insights remains to be seen.
Purposeful data collection
In the meantime, the collection of educational data serves three vital purposes in schools:

identifying starting points

monitoring improvement, and

evaluating effectiveness.

Identifying starting points
Schools use data to establish and understand where students are in their learning. This usually means establishing what students know, understand and can do at the time of assessment - questions that can be answered in varying degrees of diagnostic detail. A good understanding of where students are in their learning is essential for identifying appropriate starting points for action.

This is true for classroom teachers in targeting teaching on individuals' levels of readiness and learning needs and in setting appropriate stretch goals for further learning. But it also is true for school leaders, system managers and governments.

Effective decision-making at all levels depends on a good understanding of the status quo, which may include an understanding of how different groups of students are performing or how student performances compare with performances in other places.
Monitoring improvement
Schools use data to monitor progress over time. The most direct way of establishing whether successful learning has occurred is to monitor changes in what students know, understand and can do. The amount of learning that has occurred can be measured as the progress or growth that students have made. A basic expectation should be that every student will make excellent progress in their learning - for example, over the course of a school year - regardless of their starting point. Reliable information about change over time is also required by education leaders to judge whether standards are declining or improving in schools and school systems.
Evaluating effectiveness
Schools use data to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. Data are required by teachers to judge whether particular teaching strategies have resulted in better learning. If one teaching strategy is more effective than another, the most direct evidence of that will be a difference in the improvements they have produced.

The evaluation of educational programs and materials also depends on carefully collected data that can be used to measure improvement. And school and system leaders use data to evaluate the impact of school-wide and system-wide programs and initiatives to raise achievement levels and close equity gaps.
A frame of reference
These three central uses of data in school education all require an appropriate frame of reference for interpreting data. A useful analogy is the monitoring of a person's journey through physical terrain. To establish and understand where a person is on their journey at any given time and to monitor the progress they are making, an understanding - ideally a map - is required of the terrain through which they are travelling. In much the same way, to establish where students are in their learning, to monitor progress over time and to evaluate the impact of interventions on learning progress, a 'map' is required of the learning domain through which students are progressing.

A map makes it possible not only to monitor progress, but also to describe what progress looks like. It does more than locate a person in terms of numerical coordinates, it describes the kinds of observations that can be expected at that point in a person's progress. A map of a learning domain describes increasing levels of knowledge, skill and understanding. The fundamental purpose of assessment is to establish where students are in their long-term progress through such a domain.
ACER's progressive achievement scales
The progressive achievement scales that the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has developed in reading, mathematics and several other learning areas are examples of 'maps' of learning domains. The map that underpins the Progressive Achievement Tests in Mathematics (PAT-M) is shown below.
[Some tasks on the PAT-M progressive achievement scale.]
Increasing mathematics achievement is reflected in progress up the scale. A small number of PAT-M tasks are shown here and, when read from the bottom up, give a sense of students' increasing skill levels in one aspect of mathematics: using units of measurement.

When schools use ACER's Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) they are provided with information about where individuals are in their learning progress, both quantitatively as a position on a numerical scale and qualitatively in terms of the kinds of skills demonstrated at that level of achievement. When schools test on more than one occasion they can measure the progress - or growth - of students over time. And, by comparing rates of growth, schools are able to evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching strategies and interventions. All three uses of PAT data play an essential role in effective teaching and learning.
International progressive achievement testing
Progressive achievement scales have been developed for a range of ACER's tests:

the PATs in Australia

the Essential Learning Metrics (ELMs) in England

the Indian Progressive Achievement Scales (IPAS), and

the Progressive Achievement Scales- Middle East (PAS-ME).

These progressive achievement scales provide both quantitative and qualitative data on student progress that can be used to diagnose strengths and weaknesses, monitor learning progress or growth over time, and determine next steps in teaching and learning.

In Australia, PATs have been developed for:

These tests are available both in paper form and online, and are suitable for students from Years 1 to 10.

In England, tests in the ELMs suite have been developed for Mathematics and Reading Comprehension. These tests, available online, address England's new National Curriculum and are suitable for students from Years 2 to 10.

In India, tests in the IPAS suite have been developed for:

Mathematics

Reading Comprehension

Science, and

General Ability.

These tests are available both in paper form and online, and are suitable for students from Years 2 to 10.

In the Middle East, PAS-ME suite is in development for:

Mathematics

Reading Comprehension

Science, and

General Ability.

These tests will be suitable for schools following the curriculum of India's Central Board of Secondary Education and National Curriculum of England.

To be available online, the PAS-ME suite of tests will be suitable for students from Years 2 to 10.

All these tests provide valuable data that teachers can use to establish where students are in their long-term learning, diagnose individual strengths and weaknesses, identify the best next steps for action, decide on appropriate evidence-based interventions, monitor the progress students make over time, and evaluate the effectiveness of their own teaching decisions and approaches.

This article first appeared in International Developments Issue 6.
Further information
Progressive Achievement Tests: www.acer.edu.au/pat
Essential Learning Metrics: www.elms.aceruk.org
Indian Progressive Achievement Scales: ipas.acer.edu.au

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Mapping progress - using data for teaching and learning

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It is easy to be overwhelmed by data. And the situation is poised to become worse as new technologies enable the capture of increasingly detailed information about what takes place inside and outside classrooms. Already there is talk not only of recording what students do, but also of capturing conversations, social interactions and even facial expressions.

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Explicit Instruction

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Teacher magazine's Teaching Methods series - I'm Danielle Meloney. I'm here today with John Fleming, Deputy Chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, Deputy Principal at Haileybury College's Junior School, and Director of the Haileybury Institute. John's an advocate for the explicit instruction teaching method and has worked as a consultant in schools across Australia teaching strategies to educators. I sat down with John to see if he could share some of those strategies with Teacher readers. (*we apologise for the audio quality in a short section of this podcast).
Danielle Meloney: John Fleming, welcome back to Teacher.
John Fleming: Thank you.
DM: In your experience, what are some of the myths around explicit instruction?
JF: Okay, there are lots of definitions of explicit instruction and there are lots of different, I guess, processes associated with explicit instruction. I think the biggest myth is that it's rote learning. It's as opposite to rote learning as you can get. I think that's the biggest myth.

I think it's also often confused with direct instruction. Direct instruction is where you read from a book and you take the kids through their learning journey via the book.

That's not what I advocate, direct instruction. Explicit instruction is where you guide teachers - 'these are the key skills, this is the template that you follow to impart those key skills to kids in a way that the kids are involved in their learning, understand how they are being taught, and are able to reflect on their learning'.
DM: So, last year you spoke to us generally about what explicit instruction is. Today I wanted to get more into the nuts and bolts of the teaching method and ask you about actual strategies. Could you give Teacher readers a few specific strategies that they could effectively adopt to use explicit instruction in the classroom?
JF: Yeah. Most approaches to explicit instruction use the 'I do, We do, You do' model. And I really like that model. Because what it does is introduce a filter into the classroom that determines 'are kids ready to move on with this, or do I need to do more work around this?'

So traditionally we've done the 'I do', where the teacher says 'here's what we are learning today' and goes through that and gone straight to the 'you do' - 'Off you go kids, now go do that.' I just think we've got better at teaching because we need to find out, do the kids actually get this? So the 'we do', I think, is a really effective filter where you check for understanding. And then the kids who get it, fine, you move on and do the 'you do'. I need to do some more work with these kids here. And we've found at Haileybury that the kids are very, very good at determining 'do I need more help, or am I ready to go?' But we've also found they like the fact that they can determine where they go [and say] 'I need more help'. And it's okay to say that, because I think in a lot of classrooms kids don't have a vehicle or an opportunity to say 'look I'm not sure'. Or [they] feel uncomfortable saying that.

So I think the 'I do, We do, You do' is a really effective way ... because what it does is it hones teachers' ability to focus on the I do - 'I need to explain this really clearly because I want all the kids to get it'. I think they start thinking about their delivery of curriculum in a more effective way.
DM: In terms of strategies now, could you elaborate on strategies for leaders at a whole school level?
JF: Leadership for me is about providing a clear direction for the school. What I find in a lot of schools, I believe, is that clear direction is not actually there. Each year the direction changes, there's new goals, new things.

When I work with schools across Australia what we try and do is develop an ongoing direction that is modified over time. But the ongoing direction is 'Okay, we are doing explicit instruction, we are doing I do, We do, You do. We are going to train our teachers up in that, we are going to provide support, documentation, professional learning, resources - that's our goal, and then unpacking it step-by-step for teachers. And it's not 'we're going to change this next year', we're going to be doing it this year, next year, the year after.

Singapore's a good example. They're an explicit instruction system. So, all their teachers are trained in explicit instruction, but then each year they add something to it. So their focus this year is cooperative learning within explicit instruction. So I think that's a really good example of what I'm saying. [In Singapore they use] explicit instruction year after year, but [they] enhance your ability to deliver on an ongoing basis. I think that's what schools should do.
DM: You just mentioned Singapore, it caught my interest. Are you currently working with any schools in Singapore?
JF: We follow what all nations do at Haileybury. So, for instance, Singapore is the number one nation in the world for maths so we've looked at what they're doing. They have one process called the Bar Model Method, which is really (we've introduced it here), it really helps kids [develop] problem solving skills in maths. It's not our whole problem solving process, it's just one strategy that kids can use, but it's an explicit instruction strategy and it's really effective. And if they're the number one nation in the world, let's find out what they are doing and see what they do that can fit into us.

We have used the Bar Model Method, and we've trained all our teachers up exactly like that. We've introduced them to it, we've got a teacher here who has become an expert in it. He has gone around and modelled for our teachers, he has produced resource materials for our teachers, in terms of lesson plans from prep all the way through. So teachers go ... 'here's a lesson plan, I've seen Julian do this, I've been to a PD'. So we support our teachers in their development rather than just saying 'go and do the Bar Model Method', 'Well, what's that?' ... And again, that's what I think school development is about.
DM: You're saying you support all of your teachers with that method, that would include both primary and secondary I would assume?
JF: When I consult I work with primary and secondary, K-12, and the model is very similar. Explicit instruction evolves. In secondary school I ask teachers these four questions: Are you giving the kids the context for their learning? Whether it be Year 9 maths, whether it be Year 11 science. Are you giving them a context of why they are learning this? Number two, are you unpacking it step-by-step so that the kids say 'okay, we get this'? Are you checking for understanding? ... And, are you differentiating the learning for the kids according to their ability?

If the answer to those four things is 'yes', you're doing explicit instruction.

... 'I do, We do, You do' might take place over a unit of work, rather than a single class like in a primary school. So it is different in secondary, and it evolves and it caters for the fact that the kids are developing and are able to take more responsibility for their learning. But still, the basic premise is we are breaking this up step-by-step so that you can understand it, and not only understand it, know why we are learning this.

And this is where problem solving comes in. We would like all our teachers to pose a problem for the kids so the kids see why they are learning this. And then we have what's called plough back at the end of the lessons: 'Okay kids, can you answer that problem now?' , 'Yeah, yeah we know what to do now.'
DM: John Fleming, thanking for taking the time to speak to Teacher today.
JF: A pleasure, thank you Danielle.

To listen to more Teacher podcasts and to access our articles, videos and infographics - visit www.teachermagazine.com.au, or join our community on social media via Facebook and Twitter.

Are you using explicit instruction in your classroom? John Fleming suggests asking yourself these questions to double check:

Are you giving kids the context for their learning?

Are you unpacking the process step-by-step?

Are you checking for understanding?

Are you differentiating the learning for the students according to their ability?

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Teaching Methods: John Fleming - explicit instruction myths and strategies

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Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Teacher magazine's Teaching Methods series - I'm Danielle Meloney. I'm here today with John Fleming, Deputy Chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, Deputy Principal at Haileybury College's Junior School, and Director of the Haileybury Institute.

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Commitment to growth

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Effective Teaching

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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It is often observed that there is no single best way to teach - that what works for some learners under some conditions does not work for all learners under all conditions. For this reason, it is argued, teachers require a broad repertoire of teaching methods that they can call on as appropriate.

Evaluations of specific teaching approaches (such as Bloom's Mastery Learning or Engelmann's Direct Instruction) suggest that almost all teaching methods can be effective for at least some students if implemented by committed and highly competent teachers.

Nevertheless, reviews of research identify some classroom practices as more highly correlated with improved student outcomes than others [ 1]. Effective practices include: connecting new material to earlier learning; clarifying learning objectives; explicitly teaching and modelling new material; and regularly checking for student understanding. Other practices such as 'formative assessment' and 'feedback' are also sometimes identified as effective, although the meanings of these terms and the ways in which they are implemented tend to vary across research studies.

An interesting question is whether there are general principles of effective teaching, regardless of who is being taught, what they are being taught or the teaching context. I suspect that there are, and that generations of teachers - from master sculptors to piano teachers to sports coaches to parents of very young children - have used these principles naturally in their everyday teaching. But if such principles exist, how well are they reflected in common education policies and practices?

Here are several practices that I would advance as part of the generic 'essence' of effective teaching.
Establishing where learners are in their progress
Effective teaching depends on an understanding of where individuals are in their learning or development. Highly effective teachers, trainers and coaches work to establish and understand the points that individuals have reached - in other words, their current levels of skill, knowledge and understanding. They pay close attention to the errors that individuals are making, the skills they have not yet mastered and the misunderstandings they have developed. This process of establishing and understanding where learners are in their learning also involves connecting with learners as individuals; for example, by developing an appreciation of their personal goals and motivations.

This element of effective teaching has parallels with practice in other professions such as medicine and psychology where, prior to taking action, information is first gathered to establish and understand the presenting situation and to identify the specific needs of individuals. In many professions, data gathering and detailed diagnosis are prerequisites for informed professional practice.

It is not difficult to visualise teaching that does not include such practice. We all experienced teachers who saw their role simply as delivering the relevant course content. Under this form of 'teaching', no effort is made to understand individuals' varying starting points and learning needs. The role of the teacher is merely to deliver the course content; the role of students is to learn that content; and the role of assessment is to establish how much of what has been taught students have successfully learnt. Delivery is to the group, and individuals are assumed to be equally ready for the course content based on their age or stage of education.

Much teaching in schools continues to be of this latter kind, sometimes encouraged by curricula that specify what all students of the same age should be taught and expected to learn, and by assessment and reporting regimes that judge and grade students on how well they have mastered common age/year-level expectations. When teachers see their role as delivering the same curriculum to all students, and the onus for successful learning is placed solely on students themselves, there is little incentive for teachers to go to the trouble of identifying where learners are in their long-term learning progress.
Tailoring teaching to the needs of individual learners
Effective teachers understand instinctively that learning depends on providing individuals with challenges and learning opportunities appropriate to their current levels of attainment. In other words, they know intuitively how to meet learners at their points of need. They know that learning is unlikely when assigned tasks are so easy that they present no challenge or so difficult that they cause learners to give up in despair. Instead they provide carefully designed stretch challenges that are just beyond individuals' comfort zones - in what Vygotsky called the 'zone of proximal development'.

In any given year of school, students' achievement levels vary by the equivalent of five or six years of school, meaning that students of the same age and year level are at very different points in their learning and have very different learning needs. Some students require significant remedial support; others are unlikely to be challenged or extended by year-level curriculum expectations. Effective teachers are sensitive and responsive to this variability in students' levels of educational attainment and progress. They work to ensure that every learner is presented with an appropriate level of challenge, including already high-achieving students.

Again, it is not difficult to visualise the opposite of such practice - undifferentiated teaching that makes no attempt to accommodate the different starting points and learning needs of individuals, delivers the same content to all students, and judges success in terms of the same learning goal (mastery of the body of taught content). Research suggests that differentiation is a challenge for some teachers, especially in secondary schools. It is likely that many less-advanced students in our schools are being given material for which they are not yet ready, and many more-advanced students are being given material that fails to challenge or extend them.
Providing immediate feedback to guide action
Learning of all kinds is facilitated by high quality feedback. Some of the most effective users of feedback are parents of young children who use it to correct, guide and teach. The feedback parents provide is opportunistic, immediate, personalised, action-focused, supportive and ongoing - features that also characterise the feedback of expert sports coaches, trainers and mentors. The feedback that classroom teachers provide is likely to be most helpful to learning when it shares these features.

In contrast to ongoing, opportunistic feedback is feedback that is planned and episodic (for example, provided only in relation to specific assessment events or assignments). There is usually a delay in feedback of this kind, and when it is provided, details capable of guiding learning often receive less student attention than overall judgements of the quality of their work (eg, B+). To the extent that feedback is planned, delayed and primarily judgemental, it is generally less useful for guiding student action. The quality of the feedback students receive often declines through the years of school, with younger children being more likely to receive feedback that is opportunistic, immediate and action-focused, and older students more likely to receive feedback that is planned, delayed and judgemental.
Assisting learners to see and appreciate the progress they are making
Effective teachers also understand the importance of assisting learners to see the progress they are making over time. They know that this is one of the best ways to build individuals' beliefs in their ability to learn and improve, and so is important to motivation and effort. Some progress is easily measured (for example, improvements in an athlete's times), but in other contexts, effective teachers find ways to help learners see how the quality of their work or performance has improved over time and to recognise how they are now able to perform tasks that once were beyond them.

Schools often do a poor job of helping students see and monitor long-term learning progress. Part of the reason is that schooling is delivered in discrete time periods (school years, semesters, courses, units of work). Each new time period tends to be treated as a fresh start, with students being judged and graded on how well they perform in each period separately. One consequence is that limited information is passed from one learning period to the next. For example, there are few long-term pictures of student progress across multiple years of school. A second consequence is that the grades students receive often disguise the progress they are making. For example, a student who receives a 'D' year after year is unable to see their long-term progress and, worse, may conclude that there is something stable about their ability to learn (that is, they are a 'D-student').

We now know enough about teaching and learning to know that no single, pre-packaged teaching solution works for all learners in all situations. But it does not follow that there are no general principles of effective teaching. A challenge is to continue to identify the essence of effective teaching, wherever it occurs.

Recent reviews and summaries of effective teaching practices include:

Ko J, Sammons P & Bakkum, L (2013). Effective Teaching: a review of research and evidence. CfBT Education Trust.

Muijs, D, Kyriakides L, van der Werf G, Creemers B, Timperley H & Earl L (2014). State of the art - teacher effectiveness and professional learning, School Effectiveness and School Improvement: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice, 25, 231-256.

Rosenshine, B (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-based principles that all teachers should know. American Educator, Spring 2012.

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Essential teaching practices - do they exist?

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It is often observed that there is no single best way to teach - that what works for some learners under some conditions does not work for all learners under all conditions. For this reason, it is argued, teachers require a broad repertoire of teaching methods that they can call on as appropriate.

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Supports progress not grades

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8 things they agree on eg DI Feedbcak

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By Shaun Killian (MEd, MLead)
Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies.

Strategy 1: A Clear Focus

John Hattie highlights how important it is for you (and your students) to be clear about what you want them to learn. According to Hattie, teacher clarity is one of the most potent influences on student achievement. Robert Marzano agrees! He includes lesson goals in his top 5 list of factors that affect how well students do at school.

Hattie states that lesson goals:

Clarify what you want your students to learn

Can focus on surface or deep learning (or both)

Must be challenging for the students relative to their current mastery of the topic

May be grouped (i.e. a single lesson may have more than one goal)

Need to be shared with the students

Marzano also found that posing questions at the start of a lesson is an effective way to focus students. For example:

How do you add mixed fractions with different denominators? That's what you must know by the end of this lesson.

What is the difference between elements and compounds?

Why is Persuasive Essay A better than Persuasive Essay B?

When (what period) were Egypt's great pyramids built?

Hattie suggests using questions in a slightly different way:
How To Set Lesson Goals To Boost Student Achievement

What are today's lesson goals?

What do I already know that will help me achieve these goals?

What actions will I need to do to ensure I achieve these goals?

Strategy 2: Offer Overt Instruction

Robert Marzano claims it is important to explicitly teach your students the things they need to learn. In fact, he found it was the most critical factor (teacher controlled) affecting students' success. You need to:

Tell them what they need to know

Show them how to do things they must be able to do for themselves.

John Hattie did not review explicit teaching per se, but he did find that Direct Instruction was very effective. Direct Instruction involves explicitly teaching a carefully sequenced curriculum. And, it has built-in cumulative practice.

Hattie also highlighted the power of giving students worked examples. More specifically, you should use worked examples when explaining how to multi-step tasks. Marzano also highlights the importance of providing examples and non-examples of the concept you are teaching. For example, when teaching prime numbers it would be useful to highlight:

2 as an example

9, 15 and 21 as non-examples

This helps to avoid confusion with odd numbers.

Marzano also found that you can explicitly teach deeper levels of understanding. How? By using graphic organisers. You should use graphic organisers to show how different ideas were related to each other. For example, you should use them to show steps, cause-effect, hierarchy, lists, comparisons, etc.

.

Neither Hattie nor Marzano believes that great teaching is nothing more than standing out the front of the class and imparting knowledge. However, both agree that telling students what they need to know and showing students what they need to be able to do are essential aspects of teaching.

For an example of explicit teaching in context see the I Do, We Do, You Do model.

Strategy 3: Get the Students to Engage with the Content

You must teach students what they need to know and be able to do. But, it is also essential to get them to actively engage with the content.

Marzano and Hattie agree that this starts with students' prior knowledge. You need to help them link new information to their prior knowledge of the topic. Students need to engage with the content as soon as they hear it by:

Adding it to what they already know, or

Using it to clarify some of the faulty assumptions they currently hold

Engaging at the Surface Level

When students are relatively unfamiliar with what you are teaching, engagement strategies include:

Generating questions while reading

Taking and organising notes

Summarising

Rehearsal

Marzano also found getting them to work with physical manipulatives is helpful. And, he found that the simple act of asking students simple recall questions works well.

All these strategies are useful, but they only allow students to engage with the content at a surface level.

Engaging at a Deeper Level

Hattie and Marzano also found several ways for students to engage at a deeper level. These include exploring relationships between things using:

Marzano also recommends using analogies, such as:

Persuasive devices are to a writer what tools are to a tradie, or

The Magna Carta offered citizens what a referee offers a game of soccer

These are practical strategies that exemplify the higher levels of the SOLO taxonomy. This is an alternative to Bloom that Hattie advocates.

For further information, see 7 High-Impact Learning Strategies You Must Teach Your Students.

Strategy 4: Give Feedback

It is vital that you give your students feedback after they engage with any new material. This involves:
See How to Give Feedback to Students: The Advanced Guide

Highlighting what is right and wrong, or good and bad about their work

Helping students to see how they can improve

Robert Marzano found that you need to give your students feedback while they still have time to improve. John Hattie agreed with this but went further. He found that:
See The Value of Feedback Infographic

Novice or struggling students need immediate feedback

More experienced and capable students do better when they receive delayed feedback

Hattie also highlighted that feedback is a two-way street. Student results provide the basis for both feedback to:

Students on how they can improve

You on the impact your teaching is having

Strategy 5: Multiple Exposures

If you want students to internalize new information, you need to expose them to it several times.

Robert Marzano explored ways to enhance students' vocabulary. He found that it was critical for teachers to expose students to the same word multiple times.

John Hattie picks up on the significance of multiple exposures. He talks about the critical importance of techniques such as rehearsal and review.

Rehearsal means going over the material until you can remember it

Review involves going over things you have learned previously

He also stresses the merit of giving students time to practice doing the things they have learned to do. When spaced out over time, Hattie found that having students practice things led to a 26-percentile improvement in their marks.

On a more cautious note, Hattie warned that practice without feedback could be dangerous. Why? It leads to students internalizing the wrong things.

Strategy 6: Have Students Apply Their Knowledge

Robert Marzano found that helping students apply their knowledge deepens their understanding.

A Deductive Process

Knowledge application is a deductive process. Put another way, students apply general principles to specific case studies or problems. Marzano found that deductive thinking helps students to generalise their learning beyond the topic or task at hand. He advocates:

Teaching students how to think deductively

Giving them guided practice in doing so

Hattie confirmed that deductive processes are much more useful than inductive teaching (i.e. asking students to discover general principles from observing particular situations).

Problem-Solving

Knowledge application also involves problem-solving. Robert found that problem-solving had a significant effect (d = 0.54) on students' understanding. Marzano believes that problems should require students to apply previously learned knowledge and skills. Hattie agrees. When problem-solving is used in this way, Hattie found a similar effect size (d = 0.61) to Marzano. However, when a problem is used to stimulate discovery learning, the opposite is true (d = 0.15). Hattie also emphasized the importance of teaching students how to solve problems.

Strategy 7: Get Students Working Together

Robert Marzano and John Hattie agree that getting students to work together is a good idea. It helps them to achieve better results. The use of cooperative learning groups adds value to:

Whole-class instruction (d = 0.41)

Individual work (d = 0.59-0.78)

They also agree that inter-group competition can increase the effect of cooperative learning even more.

However, neither Marzano nor Hattie believes that cooperative learning should replace whole-class instruction. Nor should it replace individual learning activities.

Hattie highlights the importance of individual students' competence. If students haven't gained enough mastery of the material, they cannot actively participate in cooperative learning tasks.

Marzano adds that if students are to master what they are being taught, they also need opportunities for individual practice and feedback.

Finally, Marzano and Hattie agree that cooperative learning is only useful when you:

Structure it carefully

Keep groups small

Teach students how to work in groups

For further information, read Group Work That Works.

Strategy 8: Build Students' Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to a student's belief about their ability to successfully complete a task. It is situation specific. For example, a student may feel confident that they can dance well on stage but be insecure about public speaking.

Hattie & Marzano both found that students' self-efficacy had a substantial impact on how well they did at school. Students who:

Believed they would master fractions were more likely to do so

Saw themselves as poor readers were less likely to improve their reading

Marzano found that you could build students' self-efficacy through praise and expressing your belief that they can do well. However, to be effective, such praise must:

Be genuine - i.e. only given when students have made a real improvement

Refer to specific accomplishments related to the task

As Carol Dweck noted, if you praise lavishly and liberally, you end up praising mediocrity. In turn, this sends a message that you believe that this is all they are capable of.

Hattie highlighted the reciprocal nature of the link between self-efficacy and achievement

Achieving genuine success influences self-efficacy

Self-efficacy influences success

Marzano & Hattie In a Nutshell

John Hattie and Robert Marzano have each conducted significant reviews of what works best in the classroom.

There are some apparent differences in their work.

They use different terminology to each other.

Marzano uses more isolated strategies, while Hattie combines strategies into broader approaches

Marzano's findings are based heavily on teacher-designed assessments. Yet Hattie's findings make more use of standardized tests

However, as you can see, there is significant agreement between Robert Marzano and John Hattie when it comes to what works best in the classroom.
Updated December 2016
References

John Hattie. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement.

John Hattie & Gregory Donoghue. (2016). Learning Strategies: A Synthesis and Conceptual Model.

Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering & Jane Pollock. (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works.
[+Ceri Dean, Elizabeth Hubbell, Howard Pitler & BJ Stone. (2012). Classroom Instruction That Works. (updated)]

Robert Marzano & Debra Pickering. (2010). The Highly Engaged Classroom.

Robert Marzano & Mark Haystead. (2009). Meta-Analytic Synthesis of Studies Conducted at Marzano Research Laboratory on Instructional Strategies.

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Marzano & Hattie Agree on These 8 Strategies

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By Shaun Killian (MEd, MLead) Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies. John Hattie highlights how important it is for you (and your students) to be clear about what you want them to learn.

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Supporting young children's language and literacy development has long been considered a practice that yields strong readers and writers later in life. The results of the National Early Literacy Panel's (NELP) six years of scientific research synthesis supports the practice and its role in language development among children ages zero to five.

The NELP was brought together in 2002 to compile research that would contribute to educational policy and practice decisions that impact early literacy development. It was also charged with determining how teachers and families could support young children's language and literacy development. Outcomes found in the panel's report (2008) would be used in the creation of literacy-specific materials for parents, teachers, and staff development for early childhood educators and family-literacy practitioners.

Through its work, the NELP uncovered a set of abilities such as alphabet knowledge, oral language, or phonological awareness present in the preschool years that provides the basis for later reading success. It also found that measures of complex and discourse-level skills are particularly strong predictors of reading success - a finding that is consistent with the fact that language is a complex, multidimensional system that supports decoding and comprehension as children learn to read.

In our book Early Childhood Literacy: The National Early Literacy Panel and Beyond,, we explore the NELP report, as well as newer research findings and the effectiveness of specific approaches to teaching early oral language development to establish a solid foundation for later reading comprehension. Below we expand on concepts to help educators understand how oral language relates to reading comprehension, word reading, and language development; where Common Core State Standards factor into the equation; and what teachers can do to foster literacy development.

Laying Down the Building Blocks
Through its research, the NELP discovered that the more complex aspects of oral language, including syntax or grammar, complex measures of vocabulary (such as those in which children actually define or explain word meanings), and listening comprehension were clearly related to later reading comprehension, but that simpler measures of oral language (e.g., the widely used Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) had very limited associations with reading comprehension.
Put simply, readers must translate print to language and then, much as in listening, they must interpret the meaning of that language. Numerous studies support this approach by showing that word reading and language comprehension are relatively independent skills, but that each contributes significantly to reading comprehension.

Simple measures of vocabulary in which children simply point to the picture of a word or name a picture are not strongly connected with later reading comprehension. Nevertheless, many studies have shown that vocabulary plays an important role in fostering reading development in the years before and during formal reading instruction. The role of vocabulary is likely two-fold. The words, and the concepts that they represent, are obviously of functional importance in comprehension, and vocabulary might also support decoding or the translation of text into language. The NELP established phonological awareness as a key contributor to children's ability to learn to read. Of course, phonological representations are part of the linguistic system and the ability to gain access to these representations may in part be a by-product of early vocabulary development (Metsala & Walley, 1998).

Reading comprehension depends on language abilities that have been developing since birth. Basic vocabulary and grammar are clearly essential to comprehension because each enables understanding of words and their interrelationships in and across individual sentences in a text (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005).

However, children who comprehend well go beyond word and sentence comprehension to construct a representation of the situation or state of affairs described by the text. In some theories, this is referred to as a "mental model" (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005) and it involves organizing a text's multiple ideas into an integrated whole, using both information from the text and the reader's own world knowledge. To do this, successful comprehenders draw upon a set of higher-level cognitive and linguistic skills, including inferencing, monitoring comprehension, and using text structure knowledge.
Take the following story for example: "Johnny carried a jug of water. He tripped on a step. Mom grabbed the mop." The literal representation of the individual words and sentences does not enable the reader to integrate their meanings and construct a mental model. Successful comprehenders understand narrative structure and couple it with their knowledge to infer that Johnny spilled the water. They then understand why Mom grabbed a mop. They also monitor their comprehension of stories-either written or spoken-and realize the need to make an inference (that Johnny spilled the water) to make sense of Mom's response.

High-level language skills used to create mental models of text are not exclusive to reading. In fact, children begin developing these language skills well before formal reading instruction in a range of language comprehension situations. For example, young children rely on knowledge of narrative structure to do things like follow a set of instructions, share their daily activities around the dinner table, or understand spoken stories, cartoons, and movies.

Assessing Early-Stage Development
The skills needed for reading comprehension come into play as students progress. In the early grades, for example, reading comprehension depends heavily on emerging word-reading skills. As children accomplish the ability to automatically and fluently read printed words, language comprehension begins to contribute more to individual differences in reading comprehension. Most children who score poorly on reading comprehension tests have difficulty decoding words and understanding language.

Those with poor word-reading abilities (i.e., poor decoders) lag behind their typically developing peers on reading comprehension measures in the early grades, even if they have good language development. However, those with poor language comprehension, in spite of relatively proficient word-reading ability, usually do not lag behind their typically developing peers on reading comprehension tests until they have had one or two years of reading instruction (Catts et al., 2005).

It's important to point out that what appears to be a decline in reading comprehension for poor comprehenders is not the result of declining language skills. In fact, these students' language skills were already poor compared with their typically developing peers at the onset of schooling. A recent report found that poor comprehenders in fifth grade (i.e., those with poor reading comprehension despite good word-reading abilities) evidenced weak language skills as early as 15 months of age (Justice, Mashburn, & Petscher, in press) compared with their age-matched peers who went on to become good comprehenders and poor decoders, and NELP found that early language skills were predictive of later reading comprehension development, but much less so with early decoding skills.

Subsequently, many students who are labeled as "clinically language impaired" prior to, or just beginning, formal education in preschool or kindergarten, do not necessarily have problems learning to read initially (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang) Their later "decline" in reading comprehension is thought to be related to the changing nature of reading comprehension assessments: the texts used to assess reading comprehension in the early grades require less complex mental models and very limited language processing, allowing those with weak language skills to answer basic comprehension questions as accurately as their typically developing peers.

In the later grades, however, reading comprehension assessments contain more difficult passages that require more complex mental models. Poor comprehenders lack the language skills needed to construct these complex mental models and begin to score more poorly on reading comprehension assessments when compared to their typically developing peers.
Poor decoders with good language comprehension abilities may be able to compensate to some degree for their weak word-reading abilities in the later grades. That's because even though they might struggle to decode all of the words, their language skills allow them to bootstrap their way to the text's meaning, using their good language skills and rich knowledge of the world to help construct sufficient mental models to correctly answer comprehension questions (Stanovich, 1980).

Helping Children "Crack the Code"
According to our book, a key challenge facing the beginning reader is the ability to "crack the code" or, learning how written language maps onto spoken language. This is because better decoders devote greater cognitive resources to the processes involved in comprehending text. Children's oral language skills serve as the foundation for both aspects of reading ability-word reading and language comprehension.

Because few preschool children can yet read words, we must look at precursor skills that develop into word recognition or decoding ability. Knowledge of the alphabet and phonological awareness are both strong predictors of later decoding and comprehension, and it is evident that teaching these in combination has a consistently positive impact on improving students' later decoding and reading comprehension abilities. Rapid naming, knowledge about print conventions and concepts, the ability to write letters or names, and oral language skills were also good predictors, but teaching these has not consistently led to gains in reading success.

How the Common Core Factors into Literacy Development
With 46 states now working to implement the Common Core State Standards which include grade-specific K-12 standards in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language, educators may be required to adjust their lessons to align with the standards and assessments used to determine student progress.

But what if the road to success with those standards begins when the student was an infant, toddler, or preschooler? This question was clearly answered through the NELP's extensive research, which emphasized the importance of print knowledge, phonological processing abilities and oral language skills as important predictors of later literacy skills, and with evidence that teaching these early on can have long-term benefits.

Additionally, assessment of these early literacy skills is important for identifying children who are likely to need more intensive instruction to achieve success with literacy. By identifying and working with students across all literacy levels at a very early age, today's educators can take a proactive role in ensuring that students meet or exceed standards across the board.

Making a Difference: The Teacher's Role in Literacy Development
Interventions focused on fostering language aren't easy to develop or implement. The interconnected and complex nature of language comes with a long developmental history and draws on a broad range of linguistic and cognitive capacities.
Furthermore, interventions occur within a social context where motivational, behavioral, and social factors can impact the learning climate. Children's attention to language input and their willingness to respond to it are affected by a host of factors, including their interest in the topic of the conversation, their relationship to the speaker, the number and identities of other conversational participants, and the setting.

Even more vexing is the fact that teachers - the most important source of language input in preschool classrooms - have a history of using language in ways that may not be consistent with the interactions found by research to be conducive to language learning. Teacher's interactions that best encourage language learning include having conversations that stay on a single topic, providing children opportunities to talk, encouraging analytical thinking, and giving information about the meanings of words.

For teachers, key considerations for instruction include the fidelity of the implementation (an extremely important aspect); teaching children letter names and sounds by performing phonological awareness tasks; and understanding that there is no link between curricula with a systematic and explicit focus (i.e. teacher-directed) and negative social-emotional outcomes for children.

Response to intervention in preschool holds promise for successful early language development but several key issues must be considered. For one, preschools often serve disproportionate numbers of children who need Tier 2 or Tier 3 services, which causes staffing concerns. Also, more research is needed on the effect of interventions for children from low-income families, children with disabilities, English language learners, and children from underrepresented ethnic groups.
The NELP report, along with other studies of children's early language development, suggests that early oral language has a growing contribution to later reading comprehension - a contribution that is separate from the important role played by the alphabetic code. As such, improving young children's oral language development should be a central goal during the preschool and kindergarten years.

In the end, making strides in this area of a child's educational development can begin with a very simple exercise-shared book reading. Although various approaches have been found to improve young children's language, the approach of shared book reading has gained the greatest research support thus far, particularly when such reading is carried out dialogically, that is, with much language interaction between the reader and the child. Combining shared book reading along with other language activities with explicit decoding instruction in the context of a supportive and responsive classroom, can make the difference between a child whose literacy development is at or above standards or one who struggles with reading, writing, and literacy throughout his or her K-12 education.

References
Catts, H.W., Fey, M.E., Tomblin, B.J., & Zhang, X. (2002). "A longitudinal investigation
of reading outcomes in children with language impairments." Journal
of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 1142-1157.
Catts, H.W., Hogan, T.P., & Adlof, S.M. (2005). "Developmental changes in reading
and reading disabilities." In H.W. Catts & A.G. Kamhi (Eds.), The connections
between language and reading disabilities (pp. 25-40). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Justice, L.M., Mashburn, A., & Petscher, Y. (in press). "Very early language skills
of fifth-grade poor comprehenders." Journal of Research in Reading.
Kintsch, W., & Kintsch, E. (2005). "Comprehension." In S.G. Paris & S.A. Stahl
(Eds.), Current issues in reading comprehension and assessment (pp. 71-92). New York, Routledge.
Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). "Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: Precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability." In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Perfetti, C.A. (1985). Reading ability. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Stanovich, K.E. (1980). "Toward an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency." Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32-71.

Timothy Shanahan, Ph.D., and Christopher J. Lonigan, Ph.D., are the editors of Early Childhood Literacy: The National Early Literacy Panel and Beyond, available from Brookes Publishing Co. They are two of the nation's top childhood literacy experts and served on the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP).

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The Role of Early Oral Language in Literacy Development - Language Magazine

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Timothy Shanahan and Christopher Lonigan explore the connection between early oral language development and later reading comprehension success Supporting young children's language and literacy development has long been considered a practice that yields strong readers and writers later in life. The results of the National Early Literacy Panel's (NELP) six years of scientific research synthesis ...

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Data walls hattie

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* An effect size of 0.5 is equivalent to a one grade leap at GCSE

* An effect size of 1.0 is equivalent to a two grade leap at GCSE

* 'Number of effects is the number of effect sizes from well designed studies that have been averaged to produce the average effect size.

* An effect size above 0.4 is above average for educational research

The effect sizes are averaged, and are a synthesis of research studies thought to be well designed and implemented by research reviewers. Hence they are the best guess we have about what has the greatest effect on student achievement.

Some effect sizes are 'Russian Dolls' containing more than one strategy e.g. 'Direct instruction' is a strategy that includes active learning, structured reviews after one hour, five hours and 20 hours study. There is also immediate feedback for the learners, and some corrective work if this is necessary.

Hattie does not define most of the terms in his table. My understanding of them is:

Feedback Hattie has made clear that 'feedback' includes telling students what they have done well (positive reinforcement), and what they need to do to improve (corrective work, targets etc), but it also includes clarifying goals. This means that giving students assessment criteria for example would be included in 'feedback'. This may seem odd, but high quality feedback is always given against explicit criteria, and so these would be included in 'feedback' experiments.

As well as feedback on the task Hattie believes that students can get feedback on the processes they have used to complete the task, and on their ability to self-regulate their own learning. All these have the capacity to increase achievement. Feedback on the 'self' such as 'well done you are good at this' is not helpful. The feedback must be informative rather than evaluative.

Students prior cognitive ability: This is IQ and similar measures

Acceleration I think this is very bright students being put forward a year in schools

Mastery learning A system of tests and retests of easy material with a high pass mark, if a student does not pass they must do extra work and then take a retest on the material they were weak at. See Teaching Today by Geoffrey Petty.

Questioning Students being questioned. The most effective questions are high order 'why?' 'how?" and 'which is best?' questions that really make students think . They need to be given time to think too, and can do better if they work in pairs than work alone.

Testing Testing by itself is not as effective as remediation/feedback where the test is used to find what the student needs to improve and they then do corrective work.

Effect sizes Below 0.4, some of these add a lot of value in a short time so don't ignore them...

Advance organizers A summary of the material in advance that puts some sort of structure to it. This can take a matter of moments and is best referred back to often.

Computer-assisted instruction Effect sizes for this are gradually rising as the instruction becomes more interactive, more engaging and generally better designed.

Instructional media Using state of the art visuals, videos, etc

Affective attributes of students The attitudes, beliefs and feelings of students

Programmed instruction A form of instruction that involves students being taught by a computer or set of workbooks, by doing a series of prescribed tasks. If the student gets an answer wrong they are directed back to correct their misunderstanding. Devised by Skinner in the 1960s, but not much used now.

Individualisation Students working on an individualised programme of learning. This may work better if students are not working in a solitary way.

Behavioural objectives Having and using objectives in the form: "The students should be able to..." immediately followed by an observable verb. For example 'explain' is okay because you can listen to, or read the student's explanation. However 'understand' isn't behavioural because you can't see or read the understanding.

Retention Students who do not do well enough in one school year, being kept back to do the year again.
Beware Over-interpretation!

Surface learning (e.g. rote remembering without understanding) could produce high effect sizes short term for low cognitive skills such as remembering. For example the use of mnemonics has an effect size of about 0.8 (There is more to learning than passing memory tests.)

Most of the research was done in schools, though Hattie says effect sizes are remarkably stable and not much influenced by age

Some high-effect strategies are 'Russian Dolls' with other strategies 'inside'.

Some low effect sizes are not very time consuming and well worth trying for their additive effect.

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Professor John Hattie's Table of Effect Sizes - The Teachers Toolbox

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An effect size of 0.5 is equivalent to a one grade leap at GCSE * An effect size of 1.0 is equivalent to a two grade leap at GCSE * 'Number of effects is the number of effect sizes from well designed studies that have been averaged to produce the average effect size.

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Ken Robinson

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Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED

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ACER

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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Homework - an eight letter word likely to spark an immediate and impassioned response.

As students, we've all had to do it. We've handed it in on time, late, or not at all (sometimes offering up creative and amusing excuses into the bargain).

Most of you reading this will have set homework, marked it and, at one time or another, questioned whether it's worth the time and effort ... for you and for your students.

It continues to be a hotly debated topic, not just among those in the school community, but in the academic community too.

'The debate about the effectiveness of homework as a tool of learning has continued for more than a century. There have been more than 130 studies published related to the subject and these have reached different and, at times, quite contradictory conclusions,' a report from the Inquiry into the approaches to homework in Victorian schools points out.

After conducting its own literature review, receiving 32 submissions and hearing from 16 expert witnesses during three days of public hearings, the inquiry committee had this to say: 'It is not possible from the available data to make unequivocal statements about the effectiveness of homework overall in assisting student learning.'

It does, however, want the state education department to support schools and teachers in this area by explaining current research.

So, what research is it referring to?

Most of the studies deal with the United States and Europe. 'There is limited research undertaken in Australia, however a book published in 2012 by two Australian academics [Associate Professor Richard Walker and Professor Michael Horsley], Reforming Homework, provided valuable context for the inquiry,' the report says.

Supporters of homework argue it not only has academic benefits, but also helps youngsters develop important study and time management skills, and gives parents a chance to engage in their child's learning.

On the other side of the debate: 'For those opposed to homework, many feel that it creates unnecessary pressure on students for limited or disputed academic benefit, robs children of time to develop other life skills, through recreational and artistic activities and social interaction, and places pressure on family life,' the report says.

Walker, of the University of Sydney, told one of the public hearings that research on homework tends to focus on three things: student learning and achievement; the development of student learning skills; and parental involvement.

In Reforming Homework, the academics comment on the differing conclusions reached by the studies. 'Researchers have variously concluded that homework is beneficial (Cooper et al.) or harmful (various), that homework has no effects (Kohn), that it has complex effects or that the research is too sparse or too problematic to be able to justify the drawing of strong conclusions.'

As John Buell (2004) puts it: '... for a practice as solidly entrenched as homework, the scholarly case on its behalf is surprisingly weak and even contradictory.'
Timely feedback
The inquiry report does highlight research (Cooper, 2007) showing that students are more likely to complete homework if they know teachers are keeping track of their progress and giving feedback on errors and areas for improvement.

Walker told the committee that's not an easy task. 'Providing every student with targeted feedback about their homework is very difficult for teachers, so it often falls between the cracks.'

Professor John Hattie, of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, has famously calculated the 'effect-size' of more than 100 education innovations. He recently told the BBC that homework in primary school has an effect-size of around zero 'which is why we need to get it right, not why we need to get rid of it...'

He added homework does make a bigger difference in secondary school, mainly because the tasks are often about reinforcing and giving students another chance to practice what they've learnt. 'The worst thing you can do with homework is give kids projects, the best thing you can do is to reinforce something you've already learnt,' Hattie told the broadcaster.
How much homework?
This week The Australian highlighted OECD data showing Australian 15-year-olds are set six hours of homework a week - higher than the OECD average of 4.9 hours.

Walker told the inquiry committee that there is 'absolutely no research advice' on how much time students should spend doing homework. That hasn't stopped some Australian education departments from making recommendations on the 'optimum' amount of homework.

Victorian DEECD guidelines (2012) indicate no more than 30 minutes per day and no homework during weekends or holidays for Prep to Year 4; 30 to 45 minutes per day in Year 5 extending to 45 to 90 minutes by Year 9; one to three hours per night for Year 10 to 12, plus six hours on weekends during peak VCE periods.

Queensland education department guidelines in 2012 suggest: no homework for Prep students and weekly limits of one hour for Years 1 to 3; two to three hours for Years 4 and 5; three to four hours for Years 6 and 7; and no more than five hours a week for Years 8 and 9. For Years 10 to 12 it says hours will vary according to individual learning needs.

The remaining state and territory education departments all have homework policies but do not make recommendations on hours.

Even if you look beyond the fact that guidelines on 'optimum hours' aren't backed by research advice, suggesting set times - as the inquiry committee points out - is about the quantity of work set, rather than the quality. Not everyone works at the same pace and has access to the same resources and support network.

On the question of quality, Hattie is urging schools to think about outcomes. He told the committee that education departments shouldn't encourage schools to adopt a set policy. 'Rather than prescribing a particular way of doing it, let us ask them to provide evidence that the homework policy the school is adopting is improving the outcomes for kids.'

Discussing whether or not homework has more of an impact according to the subject area, the academic says it does have more influence in maths, again because often tasks set for this subject are about 'deliberate practice' of things learnt in class as opposed to a 'project'.

Researchers Ozkan Eren and Daniel J Henderson found assigning homework in subjects like Science, English and History has little to no impact on test scores.

And so the debate continues. As the inquiry report committee concludes: 'Until a causal relationship between homework and academic achievement and personal development is established in studies in Australia, based on Australian educational and cultural structures, this argument is likely to remain unresolved and will continue to be one of perception.'
Findings from the Victorian inquiry

Feedback on homework is a crucial step in the learning process and without timely feedback some of the learning benefits of homework may be reduced;

New teachers in Victorian schools may currently lack support to identify and set quality homework;

Homework can reduce the amount of time available to pursue other activities and interests which may have equal or greater long term benefit;

Flipped learning offers a new way of engaging children in education and may allow for a better use of time in the classroom;

There is strong evidence and general agreement that homework at the primary school level has little impact on academic performance, but may play an important transitional role in preparing students for secondary school and beyond;

Measuring homework by the time spent doing it is an imprecise and inadequate measure that does not take into account the quality of the work or the ability of the student or, increasingly importantly, student access to technology;

Homework can have the effect of helping a parent to understand the progress the child is making or otherwise and can therefore help make parent-teacher interviews more meaningful;

Successful schools see education as a collaborative process between the student, parent and the school, and consider parents to be 'partners' in their children's education. Schools that assist parents in providing support to their children tend to have better educational outcomes;

Homework's value is largely as a tool to develop the capacity of students, even when it has no mark or grade attached;

The proliferation of private tutors may place undue financial pressure on families and has the potential to undermine the value of the assistance they can provide, by shifting the focus from the work assigned by the teacher to work assigned by the tutor;

Homework may need to be adapted for children with learning disabilities to ensure they obtain the same benefit from homework as their peers;

Homework clubs provide a vital service for students who experience a form of disadvantage. They engage students who may otherwise drop out of the system.

References
Buell, J. (2004). Closing the book on homework: Enhancing public education and freeing family time. Temple University Press.

Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework. Corwin Press.

Eren, O., & Henderson, D.J. (2011). 'Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework?' Economics of Education Review 5(30).

Horsley, M., & Walker, R. (2013). Reforming homework: practices, learning and policy. Melbourne: Palgrave Macmillan.

How is homework improving outcomes for your students? What evidence do you have?

Research shows timely feedback is an important part of the process - how and when do you provide feedback to students on homework tasks?

Visit the Victorian Parliament website to access the inquiry committee's full report.

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Does homework contribute to student success?

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Homework - an eight letter word likely to spark an immediate and impassioned response. As students, we've all had to do it. We've handed it in on time, late, or not at all (sometimes offering up creative and amusing excuses into the bargain).

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"Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero", says Professor John Hattie. But what does really work in education, schools and classrooms around the world? Every week Sarah Montague interviews the people whose ideas are challenging the future of education, like Sugata Mitra, Sir Ken Robinson and the headmaster of Eton College Tony Little. In August John Hattie, Professor of Education at the University of Melbourne, was her guest at BBC Radio 4. You can listen to the whole interview with John Hattie following this link (28 mins). Here are some quick takeaways. If you want to read further about what works best in education you can order the books Visible Learning and Visible Learning for Teachers.

John Hattie about class size

"Well, the first thing is, reducing class size does enhance achievement. However, the magnitude of that effect is tiny. It's about a hundred and fifth out of a hundred and thirty odd different effects out there and it's just one of those enigmas and the only question to ask is why is that effect so small? Because it is small. And the reason, we've found out, that it's so small is because teachers don't change how they teach when they go from a class of thirty to fifteen and perhaps it's not surprising."

John Hattie about public vs private schools

"Here in England, if you take out the prior differences from going to a private school where they tend to get parents who choose, as oppose to them sent to the local school, they tend to get a brighter student, you take that out, there's not much difference. In many places the government school would be better. So, it's kind of ironic, in the last twenty years where we've pushed this notion that parents have choice, so they can choose the school that may not be in the best interest of their student."

John Hattie about homework

"Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it's larger. (...) Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It's one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, "Is it really making a difference?" If you try and get rid of homework in primary schools many parents judge the quality of the school by the presence of homework. So, don't get rid of it. Treat the zero as saying, "It's probably not making much of a difference but let's improve it". Certainly I think we get over obsessed with homework. Five to ten minutes has the same effect of one hour to two hours. The worst thing you can do with homework is give kids projects. The best thing you can do is to reinforce something you've already learnt."

John Hattie about streaming

"It doesn't make a difference."
Sarah Montague: "But bright kids aren't held back by less bright and less bright not suffering?"
"No. No difference at all. No. Teachers think it's easier for them and it may be but in terms of the effects of students, no. Now you've got to remember that a lot of students gain a tremendous amount of their learning from their other students in the class and variability is the way that you get more of that kind of learning from other students."

Listen to the whole interview with John Hattie at BBC Radio 4. If you want to read further you can order the books Visible Learning and Visible Learning for Teachers.

BBC Radio 4: The Educators.
Sarah Montague interviews the people
whose ideas are challenging
the future of education.
Episode 2:John Hattie
Duration: 28 minutes
First broadcast: 20 August 2014
Presenter: Sarah Montague
Producer: Joel Moors.

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"Homework in primary school has an effect of zero" (J. Hattie)

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"Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero", says Professor John Hattie. But what does really work in education, schools and classrooms around the world? Every week Sarah Montague interviews the people whose ideas are challenging the future of education, like Sugata Mitra, Sir Ken Robinson and the headmaster of Eton College Tony Little.

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From Sounds to Spelling

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FreshGrade is the easiest way for elementary school teachers to assess their students.

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In collaboration with teachers and parents, FreshGrade was created for the classroom as an all-inclusive assessment and communications platform for teachers. FreshGrade facilitates greater parental engagement and student development in a way that mirrors how people communicate and use technology today. FreshGrade is free to register as a teacher!

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3mins

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Best English Phonics Reading Methods For Kids

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A full year program developing the ability to answer 5 year old comprehension questions.

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Increasing number of 4-6-year-old boys being suspended or expelled

More ADHD/ODD diagnoses - mainly boys

More behaviour management classes in schools - 97% boys

Increasing boys with gaming addictions.

Young boys tend to have:

Lack of language skills

Less emotional development

Physically 'unjoined' up and emotions expressed through action.
- Neil Farmer,Getting it Right for Boys (2012)

My absolute favourite parenting expert Steve Biddulph has written for years about the challenges little boys can have starting school and how these challenges can have long-lasting detrimental effects on boys and their schooling journey.

In early childhood research boys have been known to be around six to 12, even 18 months behind girls when they start school.

In Australia there has been a massive 'push down' of formalised learning where what was normal for 6-year-olds now happens for 5-year-olds. Ten to 20 years ago the same boy who may have experienced this developmental delay by around eight tended to catch up if he was not forced to do things that he's developmentally unable to do, nor has he had repeated struggling experiences.

Repeated failure creates mindsets like, "I am dumb. I am stupid". It is very difficult to change these once they are entrenched and they can become self-fulfilling prophecies; sad but true.

This is where my concerns about the push down of formalised learning into the early years starts. Biddulph in his excellent updated edition of his bestselling book, Raising Boys (2013), argues that we need to seriously consider allowing boys to start school later than five - boys who struggle at five continue to struggle throughout school. Others agree:

"Boys speak their first words later than girls and their speech does not become 99% comprehensible until they are four years old a full year later than girls. A preschool girl has a large vocabulary, has better grammar, and forms longer sentences than a boy of the same age." - Ruth Hanford Morhard

Emotional vulnerability

This increased pressure for all 5-year-olds to be 'hurried up' has also seen a reduction in play-based learning and this means a lessening of movement - a key essential for a significant number of little boys to help them maintain self-regulation. Many little boys are chastised when they squirm and wriggle and in a way they are trying to concentrate by using movement to create positive brain chemicals.

Partly due to the inner struggle between hormones, brain chemicals, slower and poorer verbal and emotional processing social conditioning and the pressure for boys to appear powerful and successful often at any cost, boys struggle emotionally on many levels.

There is a mistaken perception that boys and men don't feel emotions as much as women - they do. They just process them and often communicate them very differently. It seems (speaking very generally) that boys need more time to be able to work out what big ugly feelings are really all about, whereas girls tend to move from experiencing the emotion to interpreting the emotion much quicker.

When boys feel emotionally vulnerable - as they do when they struggle with the academic requirements of their first year of big school - they tend to have a default setting that takes them straight through to anger, which is a very acceptable warrior emotion but often not acceptable in everyday settings, especially school. Feeling vulnerable, sad, bored, unhappy, confused, uncertain of what is required of him or a failure often is expressed through anger and often in aggressive acting out behaviour.

"The stronger a boy feels emotionally connected to his adult allies, the safer his emotional world becomes and the better his behaviour will be."

The stronger a boy feels emotionally connected to his adult allies, the safer his emotional world becomes and the better his behaviour will be. It is a bit sad that due to the inner warrior in our boys they often make more mistakes, break more things, forget more things and are often the ones who bear the brunt of our discipline much more often than most girls. Many early years' educators talk about the sad/angry boy syndrome when a small boy who feels abandoned and anxious will quickly convert that into hitting or aggressive behaviour.

Michael Gurian (1996) believes that the invisible drive at the biological core of manhood is the pursuit to prove self-worth. No one can give a man his self-worth - he has to give this to himself. To find this place, boys and men seek external ways to demonstrate potency, victory and independence, and this is what helps shape their search for meaning and purpose in life from a very early age. This is the warrior unfolding from within.

Boys seem to be generally competitive, active and constantly in search of moments to prove their worth and value. If little boys are unable to find success - build a tower, climb a tree, win a game or answer a question correctly - they can come to a place of avoidance. Reluctance to attend is increasingly common among little boys.

It seems that a boy's natural impulsiveness may be rooted in his biology. Some suggest boys tend to have lower levels of serotonin, the calming neurotransmitter, and thus their heightened state could mean it is more difficult for them to manage impulses. Combine this with the possible influence of hormones and cultural and social influences and we can appreciate the tendency for our boys to be incredibly physically active, competitive, risk-taking and seeking experiences to define their emerging manhood.

Where boys struggle at school

Boys definitely benefit from structure with clear rules and boundaries, but not too many. Boys can struggle with too much teacher direction - too many words and too many things to remember like classroom rules and expectations. Most little boys strive so hard to please their teacher, to remember everything and to do the right thing and it can exhaust them if they are unable to create some time to have fun and recover from the intensity. Recess and lunch time are incredibly important at refilling their energy cups. For some little boys (and of course many girls!), walking them to school or having some play time before class time can also help them energetically prepare for the challenge of the classroom day.

Many boys need lots of help to cope with disappointment and failure. Because they are wired to be winners they are also wired to see failure as a really bad thing. Helping our boys have emotional buoyancy around moments of failure is incredibly important. When a boy has been unable to achieve a task in class like writing a sentence or spelling sight words correctly he will already be beating himself up inside, so if he is confronted with a punitive or insensitive approach to the problem, he will often cover up his sense of vulnerability by becoming really angry.

"Winks and smiles are big messages of love"

Many little boys struggle silently with separation distress. They are prone to feeling unloved and abandoned, and strong physical and emotional nurturance is incredibly important as they adjust to their new schooling journey. Remember, boys like to be shown you love them or care about them not just be told that you do - so hugs, tickles on the back, soft ruffling on the head, high fives, winks and smiles are big messages of love and connection for our precious sensitive little lads.

The transition to big school can be a fabulous adventure or a struggle and every boy will be different in his search for mastery and victory. If we keep in mind that they can struggle more, be responsive to their unique needs and work closely with the early years' teachers, our little boys can feel we are there for them.

- Dr William Pollack, "The self-esteem of young male students is incredibly fragile, even more so than that of girls."
Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (1999)

My Top Tips for Little Boys Starting Big School

Don't 'over sell' school like it's going to be exciting, fabulous and you are going to love it!

Don't tell them they will learn to read. Many boys express regret at the end of the first week when they haven't learnt how to read.

Having a good friend or making some good ones ASAP is a critical factor in the success of his transition.

Promote the value of recess and lunchtime and playing as a high-quality reason for going to school!

Hope and pray (indeed, seek out) that the school has a fabulous nature play space or allows lots of free play - kids love to have freedom in their play!

Know they are unlikely to poo at school, and avoid going anywhere after school that doesn't have quick access to a toilet.

They will be starving the minute they see you - be prepared.

Meltdowns in the car are a way of showing how much they have missed you!

Be prepared for meltdowns in the car by having funny props to change their emotional mood - wigs, false teeth, masks and a farting cushion.

Don't interrogate him - "How was school? What did you learn? Who did you play with?" Your boy may not remember a thing until possibly bath time!

Let him refill his energy cup before mentioning the 'H' word - homework!

Some quiet TV time or 20 minutes of technology can help him forget school if he doesn't want to go outside. He needs 'wind down' time.

Read fun and quirky stories, and joke and riddle books to him often to keep him keen to learn to read especially as it can be much more difficult for most boys.

Share lots of non-verbal love and connection moments.

Don't harp on about school or how important it is and why he has to be good for the teacher.

Talk about plans for weekend as much as possible so he has something to look forward to beyond the school gate.

Help him get his bag organised the night before.

Don''t have many expectations on school mornings when he's little. Three things is a lot to a little boy (or a 14-year-old!!). Get up, eat, get dressed and remind him kindly about doing teeth. Leave the bed and mess of toys in his room - too much extra stress!

Have a dot point plan in his room (visual cues as he can't read yet) - and possibly on the fridge - of what to do in morning. They can really forget especially when tired and not that keen to go to school and he can go check it without asking you ... reduces nagging.

Encourage, coax and be positive about school and especially his teacher. Never let him hear you be negative in any way about either.

Have a good girlfriend/mate to regularly debrief the frustrations of the transition time and remember coffee and chocolate!

Remember boys can be as sensitive emotionally as girls and many of these hints may help your daughter in her transition as well.

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Little boys beginning big school | Maggie Dent

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We have seen some disturbing trends in recent times: Increasing number of 4-6-year-old boys being suspended or expelled More ADHD/ODD diagnoses - mainly boys More behaviour management classes in schools - 97% boys Increasing boys with gaming addictions. Young boys tend to have: Lack of language skills Less emotional development Physically 'unjoined' up and emotions ...

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Levelling the playing field for kindergarten entry: Research implications for preschool early literacy instruction

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Levelling the playing field for kindergarten entry: Research implications for preschool early literacy instruction

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Info about PA in K and PP, rhyme, shared book

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Downplay teaching of rhyme

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Our district is wrestling with how much emphasis to give rhyming as an early literacy skill. We had previously downplayed rhyming as a necessary focus but the new CA ELA/ELD Framework and CCSS where rhyming is specifically called out has resurfaced old questions. Our struggle is this .... with our very high (87%) English Learner population, rhyming is one of the later skills acquired for these students in preschool through grade 1. Reading research seems to support the idea of rhyming as a prerequisite to reading; exposure to this kind of play with words and "word families" gives children another pathway to reading. However, students who are not native to English miss this early exposure and much of their cognitive energy seems to be taken up with meaning-making. Often in our classrooms it seems we are successful at teaching the students to decode and then have to go back and teach them to identify and produce rhyming words. Doesn't this defeat the purpose for using rhyming as a building block for reading? This is not to say that our teachers aren't talking about rhyming words as they are encountered in text or pointing out word families but our question is - as we decide where to put our educational dollar - will an emphasis on rhyming give us a reading payout?
When I was a young reading specialist (a very long time ago), I wondered about this myself - though I certainly wasn't aware of any research on it. I noticed that some of my low readers were surprisingly thick when it came to rhyme. Rhyme had always seemed automatic to me, and it made me wonder about its role in reading. As a result, I started to check out the rhyming ability of my students (grade 2-6). Just as I suspected, poor rhyming appeared to be an important marker of low reading ability.

What I had informally noticed as a teacher, the research community noticed as well. In the 1980s (and especially the 1990s - though it continues today), rhyming as a precursor to reading became a big issue. It made sense: many low readers struggled with rhyming, the research community was increasingly interested in how kids perceive language sounds, and phonological awareness (PA) became a big deal. It is rare that one sees a list of those early PA skills that doesn't include rhyming.

There was so much research on this that the National Early Literacy Panel (2008) was able to meta-analyze it. Here is what we concluded:

Rhyming ability is predictive of later reading achievement, but it had the weakest correlation of any of the phonemic awareness skills. Being able to segment words into single phonemes or to blend phonemes together into words, were significantly better predictors of decoding. (There were no significant differences in these predictors with regard to later reading comprehension growth).

With regard to the teaching of PA, it was concluded that there were few instructional interventions that used rhyming activities as a primary teaching approach, but that the teaching of letters and sounds had a significant impact on student learning.

What do I conclude from this? First, rhyming ability is a predictor of later reading development, but it isn't as accurate or sensitive as other skills (like letter naming or phonemic awareness - children's ability to distinguish or segment single sounds in words). If I noticed a youngster was having trouble with rhymes, I would pay attention to it, but if I was setting up a screening program to identify potential problems, rhyming wouldn't be the way that I would go.

Given that there are no studies showing that teaching rhyming improves reading achievement (or even makes kids more amenable to and successful with phonemic awareness instruction), I wouldn't want to spend much time teaching it. There are some recent studies that suggest that as students learn to read, their ability to rhyme improves (McNorgan, Awati, Desroches, & Booth, 2014). Thus, instead of better rhyming leading to better reading, the knowledge of words and letters and sounds allows students to gain access to this somewhat separate skill.

That may be why your second language students do better with rhyming once they can read; they would have greater knowledge of vocabulary and the language in general once they were reading - and these skills are evidently important in rhyming. That is also probably why rhyming has a more similar relationship to reading comprehension as the other phonological skills: These skills have little or no functional relationship in reading comprehension, but they do serve as markers of language proficiency or sophistication. The better one is with language, the better one will be with comprehension. But since rhyming plays little or no functional role in decoding, it is less predictive of decoding skills.

There is no question that all of these various phonological awareness skills - awareness of the sound separation between words, the ability to separate syllables within words, the ability to segment onsets (first sounds) from rimes (b/ig), the ability to rhyme, the ability to segment or blend phonemes are all correlated with each other. But it is the segmenting and blending of phonemes that has functional value in reading.

I would not put a lot of emphasis on the teaching of rhyme. It sounds to me like your teachers are approaching this appropriately and the policy is, perhaps unintentionally, steering them in the wrong direction.

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Is Rhyming Ability Important in Reading?

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Our district is wrestling with how much emphasis to give rhyming as an early literacy skill. We had previously downplayed rhyming as a necessary focus but the new CA ELA/ELD Framework and CCSS where rhyming is specifically called out has resurfaced old questions. Our struggle is this ....