Term 4 is upon us

A final scramble to get units up and running and finish off the pre HSC editing of drafts still filtering through from students. Increasingly the effectiveness of a unit relates to the quality of preparation as once the term is underway, the pace becomes almost frenetic at times. Setting up wikispaces and weebly sites can help build up a handy repository of resources to draw on and limit handouts and assessment notification that can become a nightmare. As always the holidays have flown with many good intentions not achieved. My mistake is in envisaging that I can get so much more done in the time.

Term 4 workshops will kick in by Week 3 and next year, there should be some online versions of the topics offered this year through TTA. It will be interesting as well to get further updates regarding changing curriculum content, approach and assessment for years 7-12. The adage that change is good for us has some merit but I sometimes wonder whether there will ever be a ceiling on the expectations placed on time poor teachers. I look back and remember times that seemed less hectic and more productive.

Technology has been a mixed blessing but I will continue to explore how it can be used effectively within the classroom. There are many forums and blogspots available for sharing great ideas and software to try out and to improve current strategies. Powerpoints have been the staple of many teachers for a long time but it needs to be remembered that unless they make a real impact on the viewer, they are a poor substitute for a simple handout which will contain far more indepth information than just words on slides.

Well back to resource prep for my upcoming units.

Holidays!
Teachers sigh with relief for a few days before the preparation for Term 4 begins, new units and resources to develop especially for the first term of HSC. It has been decreed that we all have to teach the same texts for this coming cohort. I have many reservations about this but just have to concur that 'Witness' will be our Module B text. I have not taught this before even though I have written about it a number of times and as such do not a great resource pool to draw on apart from analytical deconstruction I have come up with. Ideas and suggestions for getting students engaged for this text would be appreciated. On a personal level, I find it very dated and cannot see that it is 'distinctive' in a great many ways as an exemplar film text. I am hoping that I warm to it once I get underway. There are so many brilliant films out there to choose from, I always wonder why this one has lasted on the textlist for so many, many years.
I am also busy with Exploring 'Satire', a text that is long overdue with my publishers. It was meant to be published about now but this year seems to have flown with time and energy spent elsewhere. I am finalising he content list and am tentatively looking at a range from Aristophanes up to 'V for Vendetta' as a contemporary political dystopian text. Many of the famous texts would not necessarily work well in the average classroom and so I am trying to focus more on those that students might find more interesting. I do not intend however to focus much on 'The Simpsons' or similar but more on various playwrights and poets. Suggestions of texts that you think work well in the classroom would be helpful.
Fine weather beckons me away from the computer.
Barbara

Term 3 Snapshot

Where has the time gone - last entry in late April?

We seem busier now than at any other time I can remember in over three decades of being in the classroom.

Another Year 12 cohort is about to leave and while shortcomings will always exist; many of them are (at last) making sound preparation for their upcoming exams. Prelim classes are about to begin and so the cycle continues. Technology has however, drastically altered the methodology I use. There is an amazing range of communicative tools now available, a timely reminder our students are from a social media rather than a pen and paper generation.

I will leave you with some words of wisdom from the Bard.

"If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work;

But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come." (King Henry IV, Part 1, Act 1, Scene ii)

"Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" M. Taylor

Beginning work on a short, five week close study of this text for my Preliminary HSC class. The focus is on examining the link between context and text and on 'how' key issues and themes are communicated. While this text is more commonly taught in Primary or junior secondary, I think it is engaging for senior students as well. From first impressions, it is clear that there is little general knowledge about the era and the social consequences that flowed from it. There is such a wealth of photographic material that students will also be asked to develop their visual literacy and empathy skills.

I will post various resources I develop for those who might be interested in studying it as a senior text for developing interpretive and research skills with Prelim Standard Course students. The aim is that the text will serve as the vehicle for refining response skills. I think many of the texts that had been used in junior school could be re-evaluated in this way. 'Slake's Limbo' and 'The Running Man' are excellent novels to use for evaluating narrative techniques such as 'voice', structure and symbolism.

Stay tuned!

Ms. Segura's 7th grade ELA Classroom: Archetypes in Fantasy and Science Fiction

Ms. Segura's 7th grade ELA Classroom: Archetypes in Fantasy and Science Fiction

Term One Survived!

Time to Recuperate before preparing for the next.

I also intend to do a lot of organisation of files, resources and stock. During the term itself, things just seem to accumulate in the paper war teachers constantly wage. I have enjoyed preparing for both classwork and TTA workshops during first term but like so many other teachers now need to look at the next round of HSC and Prelim texts such as 'Billy Elliot' and 'An Inspector Calls'. A lot of material exists for both texts which helps but there is always too much to do in the time permitted. Have started the process by putting some extra material onto my website to sell off some excess stock. I also intend to go through all the Crime Fiction novels I have used for Extension English as I have far too many to store. If interested, check out the website: http://www.barbara.stanners.com/

I think the 'Into the World' works really well with students for it is one that they can really identify with. The conceptual scope is broad and the texts on offer are accessible. Songs and poems frequently deal with transitions and rites of passage in life and some of the best song lyrics and clips I have used at times to introduce the module include the following:

'Deeper Water' by Paul Kelly

'22' by Lily Allen

'Fast Car' by Tracey Chapham

Such texts can be 'read' on several levels, making them suitable for a wide range of students. They can also be used just as readily for 'Belonging'. Back to relaxing.

2011 TTA presentations

Well a new year of presentations begins with 'Crime Writing' the first one on March 16th at Liverpoool Catholic Club. I always really enjoy this Extension 1 elective because it is so full of opportunity to explore genre and how it can be represented. Although the prescribed list does not really reflect the richness of crime writing, past and present, it still enables students to come to grips with why the genre remains so popular. I think it will always have a hold over students who have a real interest and talent in writing.

I am exploring the idea of designing online courses this year. I have really enjoyed the freedom offered by Weebly education and how students have responded to it. It certainly works really well within the classroom and I think it would also work well with teachers. I would love some feedback from teachers as to how professional development could become more user friendly and affordable. At present the cost of casual hire makes most PD courses prohibitive, especially for small or outlying schools.

Schools are also now asking for custom designed full day courses to be held at their school for their Year 12 students. This is a fraction of the normal cost and enables specific coursework and writing skills to be covered without having to take students into the city for lectures. Perhaps students would also get something out of doing online courses to bolster their knowledge base and thesis writing skills. Will have to give it some thought.

With 'Distinctively Visual' nearing a close, I am looking forward to beginning classwork for "Billy Elliot". I have not taught this before but am confident that it will lend itself well to the module focus. For those who have not as yet discovered 'Weebly' or 'Animoto', I cannot praise these two largely cost free programs for classwork. With the erosion of classtime with excursions, half-yearly exams and sundry other 'time-out' events, anything that enables students to be more self-directed learners is a help. A website respository, blog site, coursework calendar, online tasks and so on means that students are not tied to the classroom to develop their skills. Wikis work really well but I am far happier using a 'Weebly' site now - it is more professional and easier for students to use.

Will try to blog more regularly this year.

Barbara

P.S. A really effective 'distinctively visual' related text is 'The Wish', a short story by Roald Dahl.

2011 - Have gone wikispace private!

Apologies to those who have got into the habit of regularly checking out the updated resources posted on my various wikispaces. For a number of reasons I have had to make these sites private to members only. It seems that many schools are tightening their leash on resources and so it now has to remain 'in-house' so to speak.
While I had a lot of visitors, few joined as members or contributed resources of their own, even on the HSC ning site that was created while it was still available free of charge. As such, despite my being pro resource sharing, those carefree days are gone, even though there is still a wealth of material freely available out there in cyberspace. I will still post resources on this blog.
Hope you have a productive year.
Barbara

New School Year beckons!

Lots of preparation for 2011 has already been done but a lot more to do - find the preparation phase often the most enjoyable.

One of the things I have really found productive in the past twelve months is the use of class wikispaces and educational websites like:

http://www.weebly.com/

It has a less cluttered look than wikispaces and offers more functionality besides being fairly easy to navigate. I have only sampled some of the options that are on offer in this free educational option and am awaiting a get together with a friend who is the weebly guru and will no doubt pass on some pearls of wisdom about how to get the most out of what it has to offer.

The costs involved in upgrading to the professional package are minimal and so will consider the extras offered.

An increasing number of teachers are using them as well as Edublogs and wikispaces to improve student access to resources from home and to better cater for students who miss class due to TAFE courses or illness. Online repositories of class material help students get better organised and become more self-reliant learners.

TTA Workshops

Feel well organised in having sorted out the workshops that I will offer this year. The dates should be posted fairly early into the term but the list includes topics from the Extension 1, Advanced and Standard English courses. I have added a new workshop for this year, Module C - 'Billy Elliot' which I will be teaching my Standard class this year.

New Genre Book

Have enjoyed the break from writing since finishing 'Exploring Genre-War' which should be published very soon. Beginning to get a little impatient about beginning the next one which will look at Satire. As with classwork, I love the preparation stage of writing, working out which texts I will focus on and the structure and direction I will take. While the series has a similar approach, each one is unique. I will begin working out the contents once the school year has started off and classes are settled into their units of work.

Back to playing with my weebly and wiki and getting as much done before we return. Feel for those Queensland teachers gearing up for school next Wednesday who may have been involved in flooding. Difficult to imagine how such an experience would impact on the pre-school preparation that is required for any smooth start to the year.

Perhaps we should set up a Ning repository for those flood affected teachers who may have lost all their teaching resources. Get back to me if you think we could organise something along these lines.

Hoping you have a good start to the new school year. Barbara