Tag: literacy

NAPLAN and vocabulary

Test

It is the time of year when the thoughts of teachers of students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 turn (not so) lightly to NAPLAN. I’m sure many of you are aware of the controversial review of NAPLAN by Les Perelman, a retired professor from MIT in the United States. Perelman conducted a similar review in 2005 in the US, which was influential in leading to a change in the American Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs). At the time, Perelman published a guide on how to “ace the essay writing test” and he has produced a similar PDF text for Australia’s NAPLAN writing test. Perelman criticises the fact that NAPLAN essays are marked according to which words in a vocabulary list are included in the essay, with those words on the list rated as “Challenging” being awarded the highest marks. Perelman states that students who use these particular words, regardless of whether or not they demonstrate that they understand the meaning of the words, will score higher, and that students can thus be trained to use these words in their essays. However, Perelman also warns that if students are unsure of the spelling, then they should not use a word because of the emphasis placed on correct spelling in the marking of NAPLAN essays.

ReadingPerelman had been asked to review the planned robot-marking of NAPLAN essays in October 2017, and his criticism was so harsh that the plan was scrapped. ACARA seems to be taking Perelman’s concerns seriously. ACARA have stated that they believe that teachers focus on building and expanding the vocabulary of students and students should be able to use this vocabulary in “meaningful, constructive ways”. It seems certain that ACARA will re-evaluate the marking of NAPLAN essays in the face of these criticisms.

So how can teachers best help students to improve their vocabulary? Well, one way may be to study Perelman’s list, but surely there are better ways, more closely aligned to our goals of enhancing students’ understanding of words as well. It is well known (and scientifically proven) that reading improves children’s vocabulary, especially if they are reading texts which use decent vocabulary. The OpenSTEM® Understanding Our World® program, which covers the HASS + Science curriculum for the years: Foundation/Prep/Kindy to Year 6 prides itself on the vocabulary used in its resources, which cover a huge range of curriculum-aligned subjects. We maintain a reasonably high standard of vocabulary aimed at stretching students to improve their knowledge of more complex words. We encourage the concomitant use of a dictionary to ensure that students learn the meanings of these words.

Teachers have already reported to us that they find these resources a useful addition to students’ preparations for NAPLAN. This is a wonderfully efficient use of time – while engaged in HASS or Science learning, students are actually also preparing for NAPLAN’s literacy tests, practising vital curriculum-aligned core skills that will improve their performance in NAPLAN, as well as increasing their overall educational outcomes. It really is the best of all worlds! These resources (over 200 on topics as vast as geography, indigenous peoples, explorers, Australian history, electricity, the seasons, celebrations, sport etc, etc, and including many activities) are available for free download to subscribers, or can be purchased individually, or as part of the Understanding Our World® units.

So let’s help our students to become the best they can possibly be, whilst efficiently covering the curriculum, and most importantly helping them to prepare to face the world armed with the knowledge and skills they will need in their future lives!

School Starting Age: Age vs Outcomes

This is such an important topic to raise and discuss – many countries are sending their little tiddlywinks to school earlier, and Australia has done this too. But does it actually improve outcomes? The following article from David Whitebread at Cambridge University already dates back to 2013. Noting several studies, he indicates that sending kids to school at a younger age might not improve outcomes at all: the studies across many countries found that there is no long-term benefit in terms of (for instance) literacy outcome, and there are distinct disadvantages.

Being involved in developing classroom programs based on the Australian Curriculum, it struck us early on what high demands are placed on little five year olds. Particularly if this does not yield long-term benefits in terms of educational and well-being outcomes, I think we need to consider this more. We make our materials as engaging and fun as possible anyhow, but when our national Curriculum prescribes certain things, students and teachers are “required to deliver” and that can create a lot of pressure.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence

Earlier this month the “Too Much, Too Soon” campaign made headlines [in the UK] with a letter calling for a change to the start age for formal learning in schools. Here, one of the signatories, Cambridge researcher David Whitebread, from the Faculty of Education, explains why children may need more time to develop before their formal education begins in earnest.

In the interests of children’s academic achievements and their emotional well-being, the UK government should take this evidence seriously.  — David Whitebread

In England children now start formal schooling, and the formal teaching of literacy and numeracy at the age of four.  A recent letter signed by around 130 early childhood education experts, including myself, published in the Daily Telegraph  (11 Sept 2013) advocated an extension of informal, play-based pre-school provision and a delay to the start of formal ‘schooling’ in England from the current effective start until the age of seven (in line with a number of other European countries who currently have higher levels of academic achievement and child well-being).

This is a brief review of the relevant research evidence which overwhelmingly supports a later start to formal education. This evidence relates to the contribution of playful experiences to children’s development as learners, and the consequences of starting formal learning at the age of four to five years of age

There are several strands of evidence which all point towards the importance of play in young children’s development, and the value of an extended period of playful learning before the start of formal schooling. These arise from anthropological, psychological, neuroscientific and educational studies.  Anthropological studies of children’s play in extant hunter-gatherer societies, and evolutionary psychology studies of play in the young of other mammalian species, have identified play as an adaptation which evolved in early human social groups. It enabled humans to become powerful learners and problem-solvers. Neuroscientific studies have shown that playful activity leads to synaptic growth, particularly in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions.

In my own area of experimental and developmental psychology, studies have also consistently demonstrated the superior learning and motivation arising from playful, as opposed to instructional, approaches to learning in children. Pretence play supports children’s early development of symbolic representational skills, including those of literacy, more powerfully than direct instruction. Physical, constructional and social play supports children in developing their skills of intellectual and emotional ‘self-regulation’, skills which have been shown to be crucial in early learning and development. Perhaps most worrying, a number of studies have documented the loss of play opportunities for children over the second half of the 20th century and demonstrated a clear link with increased indicators of stress and mental health problems.

Within educational research, a number of longitudinal studies have demonstrated superior academic, motivational and well-being outcomes for children who had attended child-initiated, play-based pre-school programmes. One particular study of 3,000 children across England, funded by the Department for Education themselves, showed that an extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education was of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households.

Studies have compared groups of children in New Zealand who started formal literacy lessons at ages 5 and 7. Their results show that the early introduction of formal learning approaches to literacy does not improve children’s reading development, and may be damaging. By the age of 11 there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups, but the children who started at 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading, and showed poorer text comprehension than those children who had started later. In a separate study of reading achievement in 15 year olds across 55 countries, researchers showed that there was no significant association between reading achievement and school entry age.

This body of evidence raises important and serious questions concerning the direction of travel of early childhood education policy currently in England. In the interests of children’s academic achievements and their emotional well-being, the UK government should take this evidence seriously.

Reprinted with permission under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA).