Category: Archived

All the old posts from years gone by.

  • Four in five Christchurch primary schoolers exhibit PTSD symptoms, study finds | Stuff.co.nz

    Up to 80 per cent of Christchurch 5-year-olds are showing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, research shows.

    Source: Four in five Christchurch primary schoolers exhibit PTSD symptoms, study finds

    As many as four in five Christchurch primary schoolers are exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a local study has found.

    Children who started school in the years after the Canterbury earthquakes were “neurologically different” – and a city-wide focus on resilience has only deepened the crisis, researchers Kathleen Liberty and Maureen Allan found.

    The 300 children in the study were five times more likely to exhibit symptoms of PTSD than other Kiwi children. Eighty per cent had at least one symptom and a third exhibited at least six of 12 symptoms. About a third had eight or more behavioural problems.

    Strategies to address the problem suggested by Liberty and Allan have achieved a 27 per cent decrease in behavioural issues since February 2016, sparking “an explosion of interest” in their five-year project, the pair said. Since May, 11 schools and kindergartens had signed up for a duplicate study.

    University of Canterbury associate professor Liberty and Resource Teacher Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) manager Allan teamed up for the study after noticing differences in 2012’s new entrants.

    Read more…

  • Winter is coming

    Other things than teacher shortages that can be blamed on the winter season…

    • Charter schools aren’t really working because it’s winter…
    • Winter is largely responsible for Māori student underachievement…
    • Overcrowded homes with multiple families living under one roof is only a factor because of winter…
    • There is no mental health crisis, it’s just winter…
    • Cold and damp living situations only happen because of winter…
    • Underfunding schools happens because of each year’s winter…
    • House prices are only high because it’s winter…
    • Teacher stress and workload is only an issue because of winter…
    • Winter causes families to want to live in cars…
    • There is no child poverty, it’s just winter…
    • Youth suicide. Winter…
    • Terrorism. Winter…
    • North Korea vs. US. Winter…
    • Titanic, Hindenburg, Tangiwai, Wahine. Winter…

     

    In response to: There isn’t really a teacher shortage…

  • National Standards Plus

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Mum is running late for work, driving over the hill to her 9 til 5 job in the city centre. A notification comes through on her phone at 9:01am, and although she knows she shouldn’t, she checks her phone anyway. The message preview reads “Sally Burgess*: Reading – Below, Writing – Below, Mathematics – Wel…” before it gets truncated to fit on the screen. Opening it up to see the $45 million dollar app in all it’s glory, Mum forgets about the upcoming corner and drives off the road into the fence of the unfortunate homeowner. This instantly lands her in hospital. It could have been so much worse though. She probably counts herself lucky not to have plowed through multiple crowds of children at the local school 300 metres down the road.

    That’s right. The government would have parents being updated in real time every and any progress their child is making in National Standards throughout the school day.

    They’re calling this ‘National Standards Plus’, largely because of the additional time and energy that is going to be chewing into teachers already busy schedule. The additional testing, the additional data gathering, the additional reporting and notifying and uploading to the app’s system. All this PLUS actually teaching the children.

    National Standards Plus would allow parents to track their child’s progress in more detail online.

    “We will show you your child’s progress on your mobile phone, English said. “Some schools have already rolled out tools that support this approach.

    – Stuff, 28 August 2017

     

    The benefit to this will be of course that parents are kept up to date with their child’s progress as it happens.

    Of course, to get this, teachers will be required to input data as it happens. Which will have to be regularly for it to be a worthwhile app to keep on your phone. So now instead of teaching, teachers will be in a constant state of testing, assessing, marking and upload results to the app, for each and every child in their class, each and every day.

    What the government is forgetting however, is the cost of equipping each classroom in the country with one of these:

    Osbourne:  Portable Scale, Wide, Digital.

    Whether you are weighing market hogs to capture packer premiums or weighing show pigs, goats, or lambs, the Osborne ACCU-ARM Portable Scale offers the most “rock solid” portable weighing system available. The solid, animal-friendly scale uses precision levers to reduce sway and bounce and is completely cable free! With Osborne, the entire weighing operation is more efficient and less stressful for both you and your livestock!

    This scale features standard side panels, side-opening gates, a wheel kit for easy transportation, and a weighing meter with digital read out. The scale platform is 20 in. (51 cm) wide and the scale weighs animals up to 500 lbs. (227 kg).

    Find out more here.

    Using these scales to weigh the pigs is one thing, but teaching children so that there is progress to notify parents about is another.

    Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said National was ‘”doubling down” on its National Standards system which was not improving student achievement.

    “Kids in New Zealand are over assessed. What we need is less reporting, more teaching.”

    And he questioned how teachers would find the time to update assessment records for continual online access.

    Education union the NZEI said plans to spend millions building a computer tool to track children’s progress as it happened,” based on shonky National Standards, is an obsession with data gone mad”.

    “Requiring teachers to input standardised assessment data across a range of subjects in real time for 30 or more students in a class will reduce the time teachers have with children and increase children’s anxiety about learning,” NZEI Te Riu Roa President Lynda Stuart says.

    “No parent wants their child’s teacher sitting entering data for hours when they need to be face to face with kids.”

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Oink.

     

    In relation to – Stuff – National launches official campaign with education bid

  • Education policy won’t tackle the big issues | Stuff.co.nz

    The National Party is showing it is completely out of touch with schools by offering up an education policy that misses the chance to fix crucial issues in the sector, say principals and teachers.

    The plan is part of the four-pronged $380 million education plan revealed by leader Bill English and education spokesperson Nikki Kaye yesterday.

    But Principals’ Federation president Whetu Cormick was less than impressed.

    He said the sector just had a new digital curriculum dumped on their laps in June.

    “At the moment we’ve got about 4000 teachers who are ready, out of 100,000 of us, to do this curriculum.

    “Now we’ve got another idea of languages, pouring in precious millions of dollars into this idea that’s come completely out of left field, just reflects that our Prime Minister’s out of touch.

    “There aren’t enough teachers around to teach our rich curriculum and the basics of reading, writing and maths.”

    His biggest gripe was that the money was not going to be spent where it was desperately needed.

    “We’ve got big, big issues with severe behaviours. Children who are affected by methamphetamine parents, their addictions. They’re causing some concerns in our schools. We’re hearing from our colleagues, principals across the country … they’re at breaking point.”

    Read full article from Jacob McSweeny here: RadioNZ

  • Future of education in NZ for National freightrain

    In response to NZ Herald – Every child’s chance to learn second language: National’s education policy – 27 August 2017.

    Whilst some schools are struggling to get students to learn a first language, we’ll be teaching them coding and a second language as well should National get through to it’s fourth consecutive term.

    National Standards will be extended.

    And low and behold, surprise, surprise, they will be pumping money into improving the teaching of maths to primary schools.

    Seriously. When will they get the message?

    The second part of the package was a $126 million investment to raise maths achievement for primary school students. English said National Standards showed New Zealand needed to lift its game in maths. “So we’ll provide our students and teachers with the tools they need to do that… We’ll help 1200 teachers a year complete extra university papers targeted at teaching maths to primary students… We’ll also provide intensive classroom support for students, where schools have identified the need to improve their maths.”

    Obviously teachers are the reason students aren’t achieving in Mathematics. Rubbish teachers and ineffective teaching. Ignore the fact that there are other factors at play for many students, it MUST be the useless teachers we have that are failing our students.

    So to fix this problem, we’ll send teachers back to university to learn how to teach Mathematics more effectively by ex-teachers-turn-lecturers who couldn’t hack it in the classroom 15 years ago with some kind of trendy fad way of teaching. Probably after school, in teacher’s own time.

    Teachers work out of their skin. Anyone who has visited schools that are supposedly ‘struggling’ knows that there are other factors in any underachievement.

    It’s made even more a joke when you begin to look at the reason behind such a policy. A simple search on our favourite search engine shows that Education Counts has the data for National Standards Results, 2016 (PDF). On the very first graph of this document we see that Reading sits at 77.8%, Maths at 75.4% and 71.2% for Writing. So why are we targeting Maths?

    Quite simple actually.

    Maths is the easiest to address. It has a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’. It’s measurable. It’s quantifiable. It’s the easiest to show progress. It’s assessments are stable and data rich. This is something that Reading and Writing don’t have, being largely subjective – especially Writing. The government want to ride on some success. By investing in Mathematics and measuring the future success of their education budget, they can prove that National Standards work, and legitimise all three subjects.

    However, what teachers really want, and really need, are some resources, assessments, and some structure around how Writing is assessed and taught, and to see how this can impact on all other subjects (including Mathematics). Pumping more money into Mathematics is an easy out for the Government, whilst appearing that they are putting in resources and funding into education before an election, whilst in reality, they are plugging a hole that isn’t leaking (or not leaking as much).

    Are any teacher’s actually excited about this? About having more money put into Mathematics, even after ALiM and other initiatives? About the prospect of having to go back to complete some additional university papers?

  • Primary schools to measure student progress

    In response to https://beehive.govt.nz/release/primary-schools-measure-student-progress – August 26, 2017.

    Measure. Measure. Measure. Weigh. Weigh. Weigh. Data. Data. Data.

    “The Government has made a decision to shift towards a system that measures student progress, alongside National Standards / Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori, to help ensure every student gets the support they need to achieve…
    Monitoring student progress gives teachers more data on which to tailor learning plans for their students – and we want to roll this out to all primary schools and kura.”

    says Education Minister Nikki Kaye.

    More data. More weighing. More testing. More assessment.

    Guess what. Teacher’s already monitor progress. I can show you the progress each of my students are making (or not making) in each of the three big subjects that now dominate the New Zealand Curriculum. Obviously not enough though.

    “Measuring progression means teachers will be able to see how far children have come in the specific learning areas that make up National Standards.”

    In some regards, it is good that the Minister has acknowledged what teachers have been saying for a while. Some students make incredible progress within a year, but are still below or well below the expected standard set by the Standards.

    “The change also reflects the education sector’s observation that we don’t adequately show a student’s progress over time, particularly for students who may be below the standard, and this will help address that.”

    This is all well and good, but as schools have come to know through the berading from ERO and senior advisers, progress don’t mean jack when it comes to achievement, which is all ‘the Ministry’ and ERO actually care about. 85% At or Above. 85%. 85%. 85%.

    Ultimately however, this will actually just lead to the mandatory use of PaCT.

    To support teachers the Ministry of Education has developed progress tools, such as Learning Progression Frameworks, the Progress and Consistency Tool and Whakatupuranga, that help show how children are doing and how they can progress. These have been developed in a number of areas including reading, writing, maths and digital technologies.

    The Government wants to roll out tools like these to all primary schools and kura as evidence shows they deliver real benefits for teachers and kaiako, by streamlining paperwork and reducing their reporting workload.

    There has been copious amounts written about PaCT and it’s potential. Just have a look at the following

    Education continues down this reform, with National determined on making National Standards legitimate.

     

  • NZEI: Not Zealous Enough. Ick.

    Three years ago the government announced their latest plan for collectives of schools to get together and share in the pot of $359 Million to share teachers, resources, and knowledge. Naturally, and rightly, NZEI took the initiative to their members. The following was the result:

    Primary Teachers and Principals vote to put kids first… 21 August 2014

    “Teachers and principals have voted overwhelmingly against the Government’s controversial “Investing in Educational Success” policy, including proposed highly-paid principal and teacher roles.

    A resounding 93 percent of teachers and principals voted “no confidence” in the government’s plan.

    When asked whether they wanted to try to reshape the policy or start again, 73 percent voted to reject the proposed new roles outright rather than try to change the policy through negotiation.”

     

    Since then, despite 93% of its members saying no thanks, NZEI have gone into negotiations with the Government, and come up with a revised outline for the IES, and a new label called “Communities of Learning”. But essentially they’ve ended up with the same turd, it’s just slightly more polished – as I wrote about here.

    Now, with the arrival of an election in September, the latest campaign from NZEI is to get more people in to vote, assuming that the more people they get in to vote, the more likely they are to get votes in ‘Teachers’ favour. The initiative is not targeting parents, it is in fact, targeting the students to get them to bring their parents along to vote.

    Quite frankly, I’m disgusted by this approach to working for Teachers.

    It is less than amicable, and has a range of issues that all lead to NZEI losing face. Big time.

    For a much more succinct account of these issues, head over to Whale Oil’s take on things. The fact that this has been picked up by Whale Oil, should be reason enough to look at this skeptically.

    As a teacher, I don’t pay NZEI to meddle in politics. I pay them to support me. To listen when we have a vote and do what we ask them to do (since they asked us what we wanted them to do). I pay them to negotiate on my behalf with the government, not go into political propaganda against them and try and influence votes through children. I find that intolerable.

    Some will say that if I don’t like it, then I should cease membership with them.

    While that’s fine in theory, I’m caught in a rock and a hard place. Don’t forget – I am a male primary school teacher. Few and far between – for a reason. It’s an incredibly risky workplace, and while I can safely say nothing is ever going to happen, I prefer to have the backing of NZEI’s lawyers than having to wrangle myself out of any false accusations. So unlike many who can, and have, and will, I can not just simply cease paying my membership, as it is security for me in my position as a male teacher.

    In conclusion; NZEI have lost any mana they might have had. I have no confidence in them, and will not be supporting them in any future plans.

  • Academic or Mechanic?

    The old smell of oil, diesel and grease fills the nose. The hunched over worker looks sideways from under the hood of a new Mercedes Benz and sighs with disappointment at the new arrival to his workshop. As I get out from behind the wheel of my pride and joy, my very first car, he wipes off his hands on a rag and comes over, somewhat disapprovingly. My light yellow, 1980 Daihatsu Charade coughs to a stop as the ignition switches off. The mechanic folds his arms.

    “It’s not quite up to standard.” I begin. “It needs a few new bits and pieces. I have the original owners manual, it’s in the back. The spare tire is inflated enough, and there air freshener inside has just been replaced.”

    “So what’s wrong with it?” muttered the mechanic, not at all impressed that I’d chosen his workshop to drop into. Usually cars like this go down to the wreckers.

    “Well, the Ministry of Environmental improvements have release New Standards for all cars, and this one seems to fail in most areas. It runs rich, costing lots more when I go to the pump. The emissions are through the roof evidently, and the steam coming from the bonnet after I run it flat out is a bit concerning. Also, I can’t remember the last time I changed the oil. I haven’t had time to get it serviced on any regular basis. The standards suggest that all cars need to be tuned to the optimal running speed of the Ferrari 458 Italia, which I assume won’t be too much to ask for?”.

    “Of course. The good ol MoE and their NS BS.” the mechanic replies in some sort of mixed up code.

    “So can you help me?” I ask, almost pleadingly.

    “Well, I’ll give it my best shot. But it’s going to take me quite a bit of time, effort, and of course, money.”

    “How about, if you just get paid your standard hourly rate. You can pay for some of the materials yourself, and after 5pm, you’ll be able to keep on working on it in your own time, I’m sure. I will need it back for the MoE by the end of the week.”

    “You’ve got to be joking?” laughed the mechanic, though obviously not in response to anything that would be considered humourous.

    “Well, that’s what the New Standards say customers should expect.” I reply. I’d done my research.

    “Like I say. I’ll give it my best shot.” retorted the mechanic, resigned to the fact that all he could do was try his hardest, knowing full well that getting the best out of this machine was one thing, getting it up to these New Standards was another.

    The mechanic returned to work on the Merc. It wasn’t far off the standard. It was new, and had obviously been looked after. The records showed regular servicing, and the fresh leather seat smell still lingered in the air. It was well fed too, with 98 octane premium fuel, and the best of synthetic oils. The engine ticked over into a gentle purr. It didn’t need much work to meet these new standards.

    Needless to say the Daihatsu never made it anywhere close to the speed of the 458. Not for lack of trying though. The mechanic worked night and day, and every working hour he had was poured into it and the other 29 cars in his workshop that week.

    In fact, the mechanic worked on it for a year, each and every day.

    By the end of that year, he had the little Charade up and running smoothly. The steam had gone, as had the oil leak. It got up to speed of around 100km/hr with little more than a sigh, and the coughing and spluttering that happened when ignition ceased was a thing of the past.

    Unfortunately, the mechanic was labeled a failure by the MoE because the 1980 Charade did not meet the expected level that they had set for all cars.

    Why is a short story about a mechanic and cars featuring on my education website?

    Well, as I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, this is a very simple analogy using comparison. In this particular example, the mechanic is a teacher, the selection of cars; students. Each and every year, teachers are expected to work miracles with some students, who face a range of challenges to meeting the standard, none of which are their fault. Some have had good support and upbringing, and others have had to face poverty, hunger, anger, and violence. Some have the essentials required to learn in a efficient way, others lack the basics to face the day.

    There is little doubt that the current Ministry of Education (MoE) and their National Standards (NS) seem ridiculous when applied to cars. But on many levels, the correlation in this analogy rings true, and holds firm.

    Maybe, just maybe, we should be educating students differently. Rather than getting each and every child up to a somewhat unattainable level, maybe we should focus on just getting from A to B, just like a good car should.

  • Chrome Apps for Students with Learning Difficulties

    There are a number of students who are displaying signs of having learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, in schools across the country. While there are some troubles in getting a diagnosis for these students, there is no reason why we should not begin to help these students out where we can. In a senior school for example, you might have 4 classes with about 28 students in each. That is 112 students. It is said that one in five students have a learning difficulty such as dyslexia. That means that there is potentially 23 students who suffer from learning difficulty. That’s nigh on an entire class. Obviously, there will be many more who have difficulties developing through the junior school as well.

    One way that can help these students immensely is through the use of technology. (Please also read “The Answer to everything is not an App“). There are a number of different resources available online for these students. Some of these apps are free and open source for students to use as they see fit. These can all been installed on each student Chromebook account. Students with learning difficulties can then need to enable them on their accounts, and make sure they are turned on for them to work. Some teaching around these tools also needs to be done, so the students know they are there to help and assist them in dealing with their learning struggles.

    There is always a tendency to download and install absolutely everything, with features doubling up and too many to choose from (which to leads to none being chosen). I have personally installed each of these tools below and can personally recommend them. Each performs a different function to the other, and each has been designed to deal with learning difficulties that students face.

    Free Apps

    Open Dyslexic

    Open-Dyslexic is an open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. This extension overrides all fonts on webpages with the OpenDyslexic font, and formats pages to be more easily readable.

    Mercury Reader

    The Mercury Reader extension for Chrome removes ads and distractions, leaving only text and images for a clean and consistent reading view on every site.

    Read and Write for Google Chrome (Free Version)

    Boost reading and writing confidence across all types of content and devices, in class, at work, and at home!

    Wonderfully intuitive and easy-to-use, Read&Write for Google Chrome™ provides personalized support to make documents, web pages and common file types in Google Drive (including: Google Docs, PDF, ePub & Kes) more accessible. It’s designed to help everyone engage with digital content in a way that suits his/her abilities and learning styles.

    BeeLine Reader

    BeeLine uses a color gradient to guide your eyes from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.  This seemingly simple tweak makes reading substantially easier and faster because it allows you to transition between lines quickly and effortlessly.

    MagicScroll Web Reader

    The MagicScroll Web Reader turns every page on the web into a MagicScroll book.

    Its unique scrolling system lets you scroll web pages without moving them, making it easier to read long articles without being distracted.
    Many of the suggested apps that assist learning for these students have premium versions or require subscriptions for them to be useful. In some sense, this applies for all apps in learning, but the difference being that we would be targeting those students who need it most, rather than supplying it to everyone. Obviously this depends completely on the cost of the app, or ongoing subscription as to whether it is viable to purchase for all students to use or not. If I was to recommend any app to purchase for a student with dyslexia or other learning difficulty, it would be Read&Write for Google Chrome, as outlined below.

    Read & Write for Google Chrome

    As mentioned earlier, the free/trial version is already installed for all students, and some are using this to good effect in class. However, many of the specific tools that assist students with learning difficulties are reserved for only the premium version. Luckily, teachers can sign up for an education account, and the premium features will be unlocked for you. Having done this myself, I can tell you that the premium features clearly show how they assist struggling students.

    The app is developed by a company called Texthelp, and should go some way to explaining why they developed the features in this app. On their website, they describe their involvement in schools as “…award-winning assistive technology solutions [that] help school students of all ages with reading, writing and literacy in classroom lessons and at home. Used daily by millions of young people around the world, Read&Write literacy support software makes the web and documents more accessible for reluctant readers, individuals with dyslexia and other learning difficulties, as well as students whose first language isn’t English.” Their values as a company is all about the inclusive environment that all schools should be working towards. Their company values state that “At Texthelp we believe that absolutely everyone deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential – at school, in the workplace and in later life, too. We believe there’s a whole world of avid readers and fluent writers, waiting to emerge with the right tools and encouragement. We believe in digital inclusion – where life stage, visual impairment, dyslexia or dis/ability aren’t barriers to the online opportunities that others enjoy. Most importantly of all, we believe that everyone’s entitled to the best possible learning and language support on their own personal journey – from literacy to life.”

    It is quite obvious therefore how they came about developing the Read&Write app, and the features they decided to include in their premium version.

     

    Features of Read & Write Specifically for Students with Dyslexia

    • Text to Speech feature (Free)
      Highlights each word as it is spoken, proven to help improve comprehension and understanding.
    • Dictionary
      Quickly brings up definition of the selected word.
    • Picture Dictionary
      Displays a selection of pictures that relate to the of the selected words.
    • Prediction
      Displays a range (between 3-10) of words that could go next in a written sentence.
    • Screenshot Reader
      Students can select an area from the screen and it will analyse any text in that part of the screen and read it out loud.
    • Highlights
      Students can choose from 4 colours to highlight parts of text for research and finding key parts from information..
    • Vocabulary List
      Creates a document that students can add words for their vocabulary to.
    • Talk & Type
      Students can talk into the microphone and it will type in the words for the students. The accuracy of this takes some time to get used to.
    • Screen Masking
      Masks off top and bottom of the page, so that a light line can be moved up and down. This allows students to focus on the line that they are reading.

    While the free version allows for the main aspect of this app, where they can have what they have written read back to them, the features of the premium version are all highly valuable for students with learning difficulties.

    While it is entirely possible that these features can be found independently within individual free apps, there is something to be said for having them all in one easy-to-use app, even if it is at a cost.

    Read&Write for Google Feature

    Free Chrome App Alternative
    ✔    Text to Speech* Speakit!

    SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.
    ✔    Dictionary Google Dictionary (by Google)

    With this extension, you can:

    1) Double-click any word to view its definition in a small pop-up bubble.

    2) View the complete definition of any word or phrase using the toolbar dictionary.
    ✔    Picture Dictionary No free alternative
    ✔    Prediction No free alternative
    ✔    Screenshot Reader No alternative – see Text to Speech though…
    ✔    Highlights ClipTo

    Simplifies online research – Keep your highlights and notes on any page.
    ✔    Vocabulary List EachWord

    Add new words to the dictionary and they will be occasionally shown as cards.
    ✔    Talk and Type Click to Dictate

    Use this app to speak to dictate using speech recognition (voice-to-text, speech-to- text, instead of using your fingers typing)
    ✔    Screen Masking

    Visor

    Screen dimmer and reading aid, may help with fluency, eye-strain, concentration and comprehension whilst reading.

    * Note: This part of Read&Write is free, so does not necessarily require an alternative.

     

    There’s not really much more I can say in conclusion. In summary, get Read&Write for Google, and if you can justify it, purchase the premium version. If you can’t, don’t panic, there are several options to choose from that will provide students with assistive technology for a lower cost, though obviously, come in several packages, rather than in one easy-to-use app.

  • Paul Jennings – Legend

    His books still grace the ears and eyes of my class, even 30-40 years after they were written.

    Naturally, I make sure I read them to each and every class I can. This video shows the man behind the words in a beautiful way. Words won’t do it justice.