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Teaching about text forms can help students understand how text is structured and why. Teachers need to be careful, however, to be flexible about the features in a text form. Authentic text forms are often mixed and text forms evolve and change.
Information, tools and resources are available for the following text forms:
Persuasion
Descriptions
Explanations
Instructions
Narrative
Recounts
Reports
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Figure 1: Spiral of inquiry ■ Learners at the centre ■ Social nature of learning ■ Emotions are integral to learning ■ Recognising individual differences ■ Stretching all students ■ Assessment for learning ■ Building horizontal connections Source: Dumont et al, 2010 Box 1. The 7 principles of learning What's going on for learners? How do we know? Developing a hunch Checking Learning Scanning Focusing Taking Action
Reporting to parents and whānau
Find here the most up-to-date resources to support schools to share information with parents and whānau.
The key contributors to learning classrooms are teachers, students, and parents and whānau. These contributors need to maintain close dialogue, share information, and work together if students are to be fully supported in their learning. Ministry of Education Assessment Position Paper, 2011
Why report to parents and whānau?
Principles of effective reporting
Process for reporting
Examples and templates
Clarifications about National Standards
Feedback from schools
The vision of the New Zealand Curriculum is for our young people to be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners. The purpose of reporting is to share information about a child’s learning, progress, and achievement towards this vision in ways that support further learning.
Communicating clear, dependable information about progress and achievement provides a basis for building a strong partnership between the child, the teacher, and the child’s parents, family, and whānau to support learning and improve student outcomes.
Each child’s parents and whānau are their first and most important teachers. Building learning-focused relationships and connections between parents, whānau, and teachers is therefore vital for each child’s ongoing learning and success. Children are the core participants in any learning environment and as such they need to be actively engaged in understanding their own actions and progress as learners.
Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today’s Learners Demand
by Marc Prensky
Overview
The text of this lively article is similar to an address given by Marc Prensky at the ICTPD Learning@School conference in Rotorua, February, 2006. He argues provocatively that the current, wired, technology-savvy generation of students are engaged everywhere in their lives except at school. “And here it is so boring that the kids, used to this other life, just can’t stand it”.
Prensky argues that there is nothing wrong with twenty-first century students’ attention spans, motivation, or intellects, except that school makes them so. Today’s kids can concentrate for hours online, playing and sharing games in a creative and intellectually challenging fashion. If they are not focused and not achieving in school, it is the school not the students that we need to blame and look for ‘better results’ from.
As New Zealand schools consider a newly developed curriculum document, Prensky’s challenges could be important. To what extent does the new document address the advances being made in technology, where students download their music, participate in creative and challenging games, use new software downloads as if they were born with them, and constantly surf the net and text their communications worldwide?
When reading this article, consider possible critiques of, and gaps in, Prensky’s arguments. For example, what quality controls might a school need to have in place regarding the use of games and other Internet downloads in the classroom? Is it possible to use other pedagogical approaches to students’ learning that are equally engaging, such as creative, stimulating group activities that involve complex judgments and decision making related to relevant community issues?
Prensky is providing some challenging ideas for schools to consider. Reading this article alongside his other one, Listen to the Natives (also on Educational Leaders), will provide material for lively discussion within schools.
Reflective questions
These reflective questions might guide you in your reading of this article:
In what ways is your school prioritising the needs of the groups of ‘enraged’ students by introducing more choice, challenge, creativity and decision-making opportunities within the curriculum?
To what extent does your school community think that the curriculum has to be interactive and ICT-based in order to be engaging and worthwhile?
What are the key competencies needed by students as future citizens of the world? What curriculum and pedagogical changes does your school need to consider in order to develop those competencies?
Further reading
Brown, M. (2005). The next generation: Looking to the future. Computers in New Zealand Schools, 17(2), 3–7.
References
Prensky, M. (2005, September–October). Engage me or enrage me: What today’s learners demand. Educause Review, 40(5), 60–65.
