*** Proposed New Junior Cert. **Read Mod Warning Post #1 Before Posting**

rainbowtrout wrote: »

But some parents and students will pass absolutely no heed of what is coming home in summer and Christmas tests, but see the JC as official. If the new profile replaces that as the official document, then I think that is what will lend weight to the grade/ assessment.

If I grade a student as a C in a second year assessment ( or a written comment equiavalent to a C) and tell them that in second year, there will be students who will not accept/believe that is their level until they see the full list of grades in Sept fifth year. If they get a C in Junior Cert then they'll accept my grade as fair. if they get an A in Junior Cert, they'll say I'm too harsh/ crap teacher. if they get a D in Junior Cert they'll say 'the questions did suit me on the day' :rolleyes:

The school based assessments are different to the exam such as an oral in English. The results will relate to the specific assessment. So at the end of 2nd year a student completes a 3 min oral task which is graded and reported in the summer using a descriptor. This reflects the level of achievement for the student in the oral aspect of the course. This will also be included in the a Profile of Achievement the student gets in the autumn after 3rd year which is like a record of their junior cycle achievements.

Jamfa wrote: »

The State Cert is separate as it's on a separate page and is a state cert. Also presented to students will be the non state cert achievements. The SEC will send the results out and I assume schools will compile the various results like they do in TY or with summer reports etc. Like TY a school can decide what is included and surely encouraging and supporting our students in their learning is what we want to achieve as teachers.

Jamfa we already encourage and support our students and have always done so. All these "in" methodologies are just that. They are not necessarily more or less effective than traditional ones.

And in answer to your previous question,no I don't have them doing dramas and assess them.Acting dramas is in the subject of Drama,not English and I personally don't see a benefit to that practice. I have TY's doing presentations in English,at least when I last had TY's and I can see the potential benefits there.

It's good to have a menu of methodologies to choose from. But I fear that the days of individual teachers having a choice are coming to an end.

Jamfa wrote: »

Best of luck with the new course. Having students do role plays or act out a scene from a play is something I'd always do with my junior cert English classes or having them debate or make presentations. The state exam for English will be based on learning outcomes so I'll be making sure my students have a good foundation and understanding of what they involve.

Good for you! But as a teacher with over twenty five years experience and top results, I'm far from convinced. And what you say makes me even more dubious,I'm afraid.

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

I have major concerns around the certification of extracurricular. This is work that is done voluntarily and as has been pointed out if it is to be certified we are suddenly going to be even more pressure from management and parents to offer it in our own time. Not only that in order to certify it, records will have to be kept and policies made.

For example I take a fairly casual choir group during a lunch break. Students come and go depending on the events/matches on in the school, I turn no one away. However I will have to start taking a roll call and have an agreed policy on attendance at the the very least otherwise this becomes a farce for certification

It's also a very easy way for the department to solidify extracurricular without ever paying us! Id wonder if a teacher took choir for 10 years for example and decided to stop in the 11th could the dept or a parent take them to court since as there was a certification available it had become de facto part of the job?

The state cert exams and school based tasks have to be in the Profile of Achievement and possibly other achievements but no mention of other certs. The focus will probably still remain firmly of the junior state exam results. In TY we'd give out medals and awards but they wouldn't be certified.

katydid wrote: »

It's very simple. You do NOTHING in your own time in this context. Pressure or no pressure, you are doing yourselves or other teachers no favours if you pander to that kind of thing.

My take on the whole extra curricular thing is don't do it, full stop. If they insist on Teachers' Detention (aka Croke Park hours), and ignore all the extra curricular work done by teachers, we simply give it up, and show them the consequences of it not being done.

Nobody can take anyone to court for doing something they are not paid to do.

Totally and completely agree with you on this. There was never a better time for teachers en masse to get sense and stop doling out the freebies.It's completely taken for granted.

rainbowtrout wrote: »

All the necessary requirements for FETAC assessment. If we are providing 'feedback' on a classroom based assessment that is going on an official cert / profile of achievement then we will have to have paperwork to back it up.
I suspect we will end up closer to FETAC paperwork than LCA paperwork

This. The entire mentality is to ape the English system where the sole proof of anything is to fill out paper for everything. There must be a paper trail, and the longer it is well, then, you're clearly working really, really hard. Nothing in teaching makes me throw my eyes up as much as the "we have to fill this up" bollocksology. The latest being the JCSP forms - "yes, we did that, remember?" "Just fill in this answer". It's not about standards, never mind evidence of productivity - it's about straightjacketing us from a teaching, inspiring mindset into a bureaucratic mindset because our fonctionnaire overlords need that paper as "proof" of learning. Loads and loads of that paper ==> success!

On the other hand, I really appreciate Department inspections. They give serious feedback and insight which allows me to improve my teaching. It serves a valuable practical purpose and is done in the right, encouraging spirit. But, I suppose, somebody in some office needs paperwork to show they're doing something and practical inspections are just not good for the paperload. Ergo, we must write and write and fill in all sorts of mind-numbing, pedagogically-purposeless forms just to have us doing something they have written evidence of. It's about ticking off boxes for some bureaucrat, rather than achieving learning outcomes.

When you take the position that you are against assessing your own students for state certification and then they say 'you don't have to' we are in a corner.

An assessment with descriptor based feedback in second year and third year. The report on the task (which is quite like the CSPE action project to my mind) is externally assessed and bolted on to the exam grade to form the results of the JC. Then in October of 5th Year or TY you get a cert saying you participated in x, y or z from the school.

In a broad sense there is a lot to be said for recognising the achievements of students outside of the classroom. As we all know some of the most valuable life lessons happen there. The only issue is formalising it really. We would already recognise effort and success in extra curricular in our awards night, it isn't tokenistic or an 'everybody gets one' set up and the students are very positive about it (for this reason I think).

When we get into the measuring of it we are in a different league and this is where a lot of clarity is needed! Say football - are they recognised for participation? does that mean on training session? does it mean no training session but was available for every match? Does the captain or best player get the same recognition as everyone else? should they? They are all questions to which we will all have different answers. We don't want to be rewarding mediocrity.

So I think the legitimate argument over assessing our own students is won. I still have concerns over the implementation and resourcing of the other areas and I will decide based on whatever assurances arise from the next set of talks. There is some good in changing our approach and regular formative assessment is surely a good thing. I'd be interested to see stats from the inspectorate to show the prevalence of formative assessment because you would have to believe that it is non existent and being strongly resisted to think that it needs to be placed on a statutory basis.

On the support side - I think every school should get another admin person as a start to help with organising the grading and recording etc, a sort of a permanent exam secretary - or should this be a teachers job? I'm not sure that we can complain about the increase in bureaucracy and at the same time want to use teachers to do it as part of posts. The most boring and unrewarding of posts are the paperwork ones. We need posts and we need career progression but unfortunately I think that sometimes the post system only serves to drag good teachers out of the classroom and into an office. The focus of new posts under the new reform should be on teaching and learning and supporting colleagues not on paper, paper, paper, and reminder emails about when grades are due in.

acequion wrote: »

man_no_plan,can you explain what you mean by the bit I've emboldened please. Not having a go at you but this buzz word "regular formative assessment" bugs the hell out of me. They talk about "assessment"as if it has only just been invented, yet assessment and feedback are as intrinsic to good teaching as breathing is to living. We assess our students and feedback to them and their parents constantly in all sorts of ways. However one of the above posters captured it so well in his/her post about paper work and the paper trail.My suspicion is that the overlords know right well that we have always assessed effectively but now it must all be put on an official bureaucratised footing where the goal is no longer assessment but proof of assessment.And that is soul destroying for teachers,not a good thing.

If teachers are already doing assessments then what's difficult about providing proof of assessment? It will essentially be a school report that has been put on a formal footing by the Department.

political analyst wrote: »

If teachers are already doing assessments then what's difficult about providing proof of assessment? It will essentially be a school report that has been put on a formal footing by the Department.

These were my thoughts. I would give a rigorous Christmas and summer assessment made up of continuous assessment and a terminal exam. I can't see how this is different to the proposal.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

These were my thoughts. I would give a rigorous Christmas and summer assessment made up of continuous assessment and a terminal exam. I can't see how this is different to the proposal.

What is different is the high level of bureaucratisation. Look at all the above posts from people in the know about what that involves and it is very daunting to say the list. Paper work eats into the time and energy better spent doing what a teacher does best,teaching!

acequion wrote: »

What is different is the high level of bureaucratisation. Look at all the above posts from people in the know about what that involves and it is very daunting to say the list. Paper work eats into the time and energy better spent doing what a teacher does best,teaching!

When we place students in classes after first year each teacher in the department corrects a specific assessment which makes up this overall assessment so one teacher corrects all the comprehensions for instance. There is a quick meeting to decide who will correct what assessment and what will be on the paper which lasts about 5 minutes usually. Results are uploaded online to keep track and tally them automatically which means there is no labour in adding results.

man_no_plan wrote: »

I mean not just "You got a 'C'"

When I did leaving Cert English it was all I ever got. My teacher was a lady, no doubt and was very caring and was really into her English. But apart from a grade we never got anything.

I wanted to know how to get a B. I'd write longer essays, I'd get the thesaurus out I'd do whatever I thought I could but never got any further. I know that essay writing is subjective enough but what I needed was to be told 'if you want a B you need to do x, y and z'. In addition to my English class experience I had plenty of other teachers and plenty of other assessments where I did get useful feedback - so it's not all new.

That's what I mean by formative assessment. The grade can't be the end of the line. Even if it is the end of your covering of a topic the student will still need some direction as to what to do. 'Needs to try harder' doesn't do it.

I think we have come a long way since I was in school and I know that in my teaching and in that of my colleagues the feedback is regular and useful. We're just giving it a name now. I'm wondering though is it so rare a species that we have to copperfasten it into our curriculum to make it happen. It's as if no teacher ever heard of it and now to get us to use this new bright idea it had to be formalised.

Good teaching is happening all the time. But we do teach to the test too much.

man_no_plan do you seriously think a teacher can incorporate individual feedback of 30 4-6 page assignments on a regular, sustainable basis and still do the myriad of other tasks required on a full timetable? Because I don't. I fully get what you are saying and I also fully get the desirability of individual feedback,but it is neither fair nor sustainable to demand that of English teachers within the current restraints of the job. There is only so much a teacher can do and a teacher has a life outside the classroom!

I spend on average two hours on a batch of English assignments and that is working fast. I always try to put useful individual comments where I can,but it isn't always so straight forward. I would always have a general feedback class on the general problems in a batch of assignments with pointers for improvements and also do an edmodo post on this.Expecting the provision of individual feedback in our huge class sizes with all the additional problems of behaviour etc is extremely unfair on the teacher and all English teachers need to stand together and highlight this issue!

The DES as usual are asking too much of us. They don't care about burn out and casualisation suits their agenda because there are plenty of new young teachers biting at the bit to get in until they too burn out. People need to wake up to this!!

Gebgbegb wrote: »

On the face of it, that's how it's being sold... but as we know, once it becomes a box ticking exercise then the nature of the teaching changes.

Have a look at the UK's turnaround..

Teachers-told-spend-less-time-marking-books-to-cut-excessive-workload.html

"In a letter to the Education Secretary, heads insisted the government had to play a bigger part in cutting teachers’ workload, including scaling back league tables and easing the pressure caused by Ofsted inspections.
But the association said schools themselves should also take the lead by cutting back on the marking of books and even reducing lengthy reports to parents.".

Once the paperwork and box ticking is in, the next step is 'formative assessment' to the Nth degree. I'll bet all of the teachers here have been aware of the increasing mention of it from whole school evaluations/Drive by inspections/Inservices or CPD from PDST... the bigg buzzword is feedback.
Every time I hear this I think... paperwork.

"So what ?" you may ask.. it's just teachers doing the usual complaining. But for me the new science of 'measurement' of the immeasurable and expectiation of 'fun' in every class is killing education.

Here's the Scottish experience:

"This new curriculum draws on all of the worst aspects of the new internationally adopted pedagogies. It elevates learning over teaching, undermining the intellectual authority of teachers, and uses student mot­ivation and enjoyment as the measure of what is worth knowing. It attempts to blur the boundaries between specialist disciplines and rests upon the idea that the purpose of education is to build pupils’ confidence and self-esteem rather than their knowledge and understanding.

This new curriculum was sold to the Scottish public on the grounds that it would give children more choice, that their education could be “personalised”, and that they would take ownership of their learning through educational portfolios and personal-development plans. The reality is that pupils have fewer subject choices; the only personal element of the new regime relates not to the academic programme, but to a therapeutic agenda,"
http://www.scotsman.com/news/penny-lewis-no-marks-for-curriculum-for-excellence-1-3775050

All of that sounds frightfully familiar.

Completely agree.Frightening and very worrying. I would appeal to my collegues to please realise this!

acequion wrote: »

man_no_plan do you seriously think a teacher can incorporate individual feedback of 30 4-6 page assignments on a regular, sustainable basis and still do the myriad of other tasks required on a full timetable? Because I don't. I fully get what you are saying and I also fully get the desirability of individual feedback,but it is neither fair nor sustainable to demand that of English teachers within the current restraints of the job. There is only so much a teacher can do and a teacher has a life outside the classroom!

I spend on average two hours on a batch of English assignments and that is working fast. I always try to put useful individual comments where I can,but it isn't always so straight forward. I would always have a general feedback class on the general problems in a batch of assignments with pointers for improvements and also do an edmodo post on this.Expecting the provision of individual feedback in our huge class sizes with all the additional problems of behaviour etc is extremely unfair on the teacher and all English teachers need to stand together and highlight this issue!

Is individual feedback not part of our job anyway, without it having to be formalised? I have always done comment-only marking, a mark is useless to most students, especially when they get to LC.

acequion wrote: »

I don't agree. If you spend whole classes on assignment feedback making it clear what exactly constitutes A,B,C,D and fail the kids catch on. At least the ones who do each assignment and listen attentively. Very often it is the ones who don't come to class and don't pay attention when they do are the most demanding when it comes to feedback on the rare assignment that they hand up.

Individualised commentary on each assignment for each student is an unsustainable demand on a teacher. I am not saying not to put an individual comment,what I am saying is that it is not always necessary.

Comment only feedback is the only way students improve. Pointing out one good thing and one thing they can improve is better than sticking a grade on it.

acequion wrote: »

Individualised commentary on each assignment for each student is an unsustainable demand on a teacher. I am not saying not to put an individual comment,what I am saying is that it is not always necessary.

It already takes place in Christmas and Summer school reports. The reform simply puts in on a formal footing, i.e. it's on a certificate with the State harp on it.

political analyst wrote: »

It already takes place in Christmas and Summer school reports. The reform simply puts in on a formal footing, i.e. it's on a certificate with the State harp on it.

It won't have a harp actually. And I'm not keen to formalise everything in order to prove it has value.

Making simplistic arguments like that are no addition to the debate.

political analyst wrote: »

It already takes place in Christmas and Summer school reports. The reform simply puts in on a formal footing, i.e. it's on a certificate with the State harp on it.

I was not referring to school reports. I get the impression that you don't know what I'm talking about regarding feedback and commentary. Are you a teacher or as the user name suggests, a political analyst?