English
Dear Parents,
Happy New Year! We hope the holidays were restful and enjoyable for all of our families. Another exciting year of English learning awaits!
Testing
As you may have heard from students, we start each year with a wide range of testing on our students. Just to reiterate though, testing has come a long way from what it used to be.
Testing is used by teachers to see how each student in their class is progressing and this is very important after a big holiday break where students have been away from school. Teachers are always surprised at how much the students have grown in height over the holidays, but there is plenty happening with their brain growth as well!
Testing takes place in a number of formats at school, whether that be written, oral, online and more. Tests are never designed to stress or upset our students. Our mantra will always be for students to try their best and see how they go.
As a teacher I will never forget this story from a number of years ago. I had explained to my Year Six class that we were doing a PRE test in maths to see how they were going. Half an hour later one of my students handed me his page shaking his head sighing and said, 'You haven't taught us any of that!' How funny!
Modern testing is also done in a way which discourages comparisons between students. This can happen with a classes data sometimes, to see say how an entire class has performed, but more than ever data collected is only compared to the previous efforts of each student. Everyone has their own learning journey with its challenges and at St Anthony's we work to help all of our students learn and grow in their own way.
Through the year I can outline some of the testing we do here at St Anthony's and the data it produces but always feel free to send me an email if you are curious.
Video Games on the Big Screen
If you have read any of my previous newsletter items you know how much I love to encourage movies and television as a method of story and as a way to unpack literacy. Students discussing the plots and characters from their favourite films and shows is a great way to practice these skills.
Something that is really interesting now is that we are seeing a great deal of cross over between Video Games and these other media formats. The two Sonic movies were incredibly popular with students, there is a new Super Mario Movie on the way and we are even seeing some shows for adults like The Last of Us which is trending at the moment. Each of these are based off the story and characters from Video Games.
Now I have to admit I am a bit of a nerd and love video games but please don't think I am suggesting that playing them always equals learning. Everything in moderation. What is great though is that these can be used as a gateway to discuss literacy topics with our children, and the best part is they might not even realise as they are simply speaking about something they are passionate about.
Here are some examples below of discussion points that can take place at any time and get our students thinking. Remember to encourage children to speak in full and express their ideas in more than a few words:
- Do you think it would be fun being in a video game or stressful? Can you explain why?
- If Mario (or any game character) was filling in a job application, what do you think they would write down as their skills?
- What are five adjectives you would use to describe this level?
- Do you think this game would make a good book or movie? Why or why not?
- If you were trying to share with an assembly what the best video game in the world is, which one would you pick? What would some of the reasons be that you would say?
I'm looking forward to another year working with all the fantastic parents at our school.
Happy gaming over the weekend!
Tim O'Mahoney
English Leader