Tag Archives: NAPLAN

What bonus?

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It’s been announced that the Federal Government intend to pay bonuses for “the best teachers”. An article has appeared on the ABC website.

When Julia Gillard first floated the idea of new bonuses for teachers of students who’d performed well in NAPLAN, we sort of imagined it would be the school as a whole that benefited, not individual teachers. Our school has worked really hard on literacy and numeracy in recent years; according to NAPLAN, our Year 5 students started low in Year 3 and didn’t necessarily finish high in Year 5, but their improvement from Year 3 to Year 5 was phenomenal. But… who did the “value-adding” of these students anyway? Was it the Year 5 teachers in the first few months of last year, the Year 4 teachers between tests in 2009, or the Year 3 teachers in the last semester of 2008? Who gets paid if a (totally theoretical) teacher was on long service leave, or extended sick leave for the duration of the lead-up to the second NAPLAN test? The talented casual who has long since gone?

What if it was actually our incredibly hardworking STLD, ESL, and Reading Recovery teachers? Or do we, instead, salute our Principal’s leadership? The class teacher who set up a new literacy program and ended up seconded to a DET, now DEC, Priority Schools Program position? The assistant principal who set up a database to track students? The assistant principal who ran the student welfare program? Or our team of “early intervention” parent volunteers and Aboriginal community liaison, who spend hours with little magnetic letters on baking trays, working 1:1 with needy K-3 students? Or our hardworking but very modest teacher-librarian?

Maybe – gasp! – it was all of us: K-6 teachers, support staff, school executive, P&C, volunteers, canteen assistants, general assistant, clerical staff, cleaning staff…, all working together like a sometimes-well-oiled team?

It seems that some of that team is destined to miss out big time. Especially since the new bonus scheme is supposedly three years away. Equity in education?

Mathematics and the teacher-librarian

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A primary teacher-librarian asked about how T-L colleagues felt about taking groups of students “to get NAPLAN results up”!

I have no problem with the concept. Working with a group of students on the language used in mathematics, or deconstructing written problems using steps in the information process as a strategy for understanding, or, especially, concentrating on the literacy skills used in reciprocal numeracy, are very much in the domain of a teacher-librarian.

I urged my colleague to take the challenge, but insist on a focus that is drawn from the online NAPLAN support materials. Lots of information-oriented perspectives here!

This term, I’m about to work with several groups of Stage 1 students using mathematical language and nursery rhyme characters, to create wiki pages of short jointly-constructed narratives. Maths literacy is our current PSP focus and I’m happy to share my T-L expertise in this area with teaching colleagues, even though I’ve never considered maths teaching to be a particular personal passion. More on this as the project firms up.

During my time as editor of “Scan” professional journal (1998-2002), I commissioned several articles from both NSW DET curriculum advisors and teacher-librarians on the topic of mathematics and the school library. We had an excellent one from Peter Gould in 2002 on “numeracy” as the “sibling of literacy”. Definitely worth checking out those back issues; some aspects have probably dated a little, but the following list of back-issue abstracts shows that there are many opportunities for TLs to assist with the crucial KLA of mathematics.

GOULD, Peter. ‘More than words’ in “Scan” 21(1) February, 2002, pp 8-12.
“Numeracy involves using mathematics effectively to make sense of the world. It is a fundamental component of learning, performance, discourse, and critique. The State Literacy and Numeracy Plan identifies a range of key objectives in the Department’s support for numeracy.”

TODD, Ross J. & O’CONNELL, Judith. ‘Teachers as learners: transformational leadership and autonomous learning in an electronic age’ in “Scan” 18(3) August, 1999, pp 41-47.
“A professional development program for secondary teachers was constructed… [including…] exploring cross faculty mathematics integration…”

HARDAGE, Paul. ‘The language of other subjects’ in “Scan” 18(1) February, 1999, pp 10-13.
“The social view of language has led to a paradigm shift about language; ‘the language of different subject disciplines’ replaces ‘literacy across the curriculum’. Today’s teachers and teacher-librarians use the explicit instructional practices associated with text types, and emphasise social purpose.”

MAHER, Cynthia, GRAHAM, Peter & LANNEN, Brian. ‘Mathematics + collaboration + technology = success’ in Scan 18(1) February, 1999, pp 20-23.
“Gifted and talented mathematics students from small, isolated schools were involved in the MEGA (Mathematics Enrichment Group Albury) Project. Through email and the Internet, teachers provided activities to a virtual class, culminating in a Maths Activity Day hosted by Holbrook Public School.”

COOK, Jan. ‘Maths on the Net’ in “Scan” 18(1) February, 1999, p 24.
“In the Broken Hill District, a program was initiated which integrates mathematics, problem solving and ICT. Email and the Internet provide communication between virtual teams of students and schools, enhancing: literacy skills in mathematics; cooperation; and training and development of teachers.”

GOULD, Peter. ‘Mathematics K-6: the outcomes addendum’ in “Scan” 17(3) August, 1998, p 4.
“The new ‘Outcomes and indicators addendum for Mathematics K-6′ impacts on schools’ scope and sequence charts and whole-school planning. The article advocates collaborative programming, knowledge of students’ prior achievements and support from the teacher-librarian. A matrix suggests key programming questions.”