[English] support for yr 7-10 program

Mon Feb 14 23:14:36 EST 2011

Hello to both of you and thankyou for your input. It is nice to know I am
not alone with some of the issues I am having. 

Katy do you have a document of your underlying philosophy and how do you
ensure the sharing happens? Do all teachers follow the same format or do
they like to invent or do their own thing? Does everyone use 3 as standard? 

Do you use grades A+ - E – on reports…and if so how are they determined?
Just on the standard or some other way? (where C is at standard?)  When I
have used rubrics I do prefer the 5 column to rubistars 4…

Neale 

Like you I am focussing on writing – some teachers have taken on the ‘7
steps’ approach they learned about least year at an inservice. I have been
looking at 6 traits + 1 – I do not know which might be the better approach –
but having a journal for writing has been our starting point. I am going to
try and get more inservicing on teaching writing across the domain. What I
am really after though is rubrics – or a common format that teachers can
then work from. I like the idea of your extracts approach. I think for us
the main thing is not to get so bogged in a text study that everything else
suffers. 

Cheers

Jenny Gilbert

English Coordinator, St Joseph's College Mildura

 <http://nenifoofer.edublogs.org/> Blog

 <http://msgsresources.wikispaces.com/> Wiki

 <http://www.diigo.com/user/nenifoofer> Diigo 

Jens  <http://livebinders.com/edit?id=6500> PLN at Live Binders

Twitter - @nenifoofer

From: english-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:english-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Kathy Skidmore
Sent: Monday, 14 February 2011 12:20 PM
To: VCE English Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [English] support for yr 7-10 program

We did a grid, taken from the VELS document, that listed the progressions
skill by skill. They DON’T ALWAYS OCCUR (!!!) e.g. Spelling is not mentioned
at all levels. 
We then decided that for each task in class we would assign a specific skill
– and assess on a rubric for that skill. On a 5-point rubric, 3 would be “at
standard” - e.g. 5.0 and the corresponding/surrounding points would match
the surrounding VELS levels. 
If you use RUBISTAR, you get 4 levels, and I personally use 3 as “at
standard”, as being near the “top” encourages the kids.
If you want to assess a piece of work for a variety of skills or VELS
strands, you modify accordingly, but the assessment becomes less specific.
We devise our own rubrics, but share them, as not everyone does the same
tasks. However, the underlying philosophy is used across all levels.
Cheers – hope that is clear enough!
Kathy Skidmore,
Wanganui Park SC
Shepparton.

On 14/02/11 12:01 PM, "Neale Baker" <NBaker at sac.vic.edu.au> wrote:

Hi Jenny
I would be happy to join the discussion. I am in my first year as Head of
English and am interested in the same ideas, though I may not have much to
offer so far...
We are going to look at assessment sheets too as we have a million and one
different varieties so we want to have some common ground for consistency
and also to have the students have some idea of what we require.
Briefly, overview we seem to handle the text analysis side of English quite
well and preparing studenyts for writng essays. For us this year, we are
concentrating more on writing, creatively I suppose as looking at our Y12
results the context is the area we atre down.. We use short forms at Y7-10
using extracts from authors as models for their own writing, poetry and
prose. This seems to be working quite well. Studnets anecdotal feedback is
quite positive.
Does this help? I will check your twitter feed as well

Neale Baker
Head of English
Sacré Cœur
172 Burke Road, Glen Iris, Australia 3146
Phone:  613 9835 2724  FAX:  613 9885 5936
Email: nbaker at sac.vic.edu.au
www.sacrecoeur.vic.edu.au <http://www.sacrecoeur.vic.edu.au/> 

  _____  

From: english-bounces at edulists.com.au [english-bounces at edulists.com.au] On
Behalf Of Jenny Gilbert [nenifoofer at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, 12 February 2011 8:27 AM
To: 'VCE English Teachers' Mailing List'
Subject: [English] support for yr 7-10 program

Hi

I know this list is for VCE but I am hopeful some people may like to share
with me off list what goes on in year 7-10 in their schools. I am no going
into my third year as domain leader and I have a real bee in my bonnet. I
want to prepare a complete scope and sequence for 7-10 that clearly goves
the big picture and determines the common ground we work from at the school
level. I am struggling with the best way to format or lay this out – I have
seen a good example from NSW – but that isn’t quite what I need since the
underlying core standards are different from the VELS. Would you care to
share such a map of what your school is doing? 

I am also after examples of assessment sheets  – the model we use was
originally prepared for VELS recording and blending this with grading.
Having used it for a number of years we are finding it is not a useful tool
for students or their parents for lots of reasons I do not wish to into. I
know there is no perfect beast for this – but if you are prepared to share
what your school does I would greatly appreciate it. I am genuinely
interested in those of you using rubrics – what do you have one them – how
do you ‘score’ them. There are I know thousands of examples online but most
seem linked to everyone else’s curriculum. Finding those that specifically
identify objectives based on VELS PP’s is something I have not succeeded at
when it comes to seeing what others do. Any advice/example would be
appreciated. 

In return If you are a twitter user you will see I use #vceeng to share
resources. Please join me. Thanks

Jenny Gilbert

English Coordinator, St Joseph's College Mildura
Blog <http://nenifoofer.edublogs.org/> 
Wiki <http://msgsresources.wikispaces.com/> 
Diigo <http://www.diigo.com/user/nenifoofer> 
Jens PLN at Live Binders <http://livebinders.com/edit?id=6500> 
Twitter - @nenifoofer

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