Comments on: An example – chopper tolley’s standard for year 4 reading

By: Tracey

Tracey — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:53:08 +0000

I hope the Real Estate industry is ready for anothe rinflux of teachers to its ranks…

By: Fred

Fred — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:55:20 +0000

The levels that they are pitching this for kids demonstrates a lack of understanding of learning

Benjamin Bloom (1956) developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour in learning. This taxonomy contained three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Within the cognitive domain, he identified six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These domains and levels are still useful today as you develop the critical thinking skills of your students.

Mrs. Tolley seems to think nine year olds will be able to critically analyse texts; shame Bloom et al. found quite differently over 50 years ago.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:21:35 +0000

@ASA – yep. Criminal really.

By: ASA

ASA — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:04:49 +0000

@Paul. As you say, I can already hear ” teachers can’t be trusted, a testing regime will need to be introduced” …and there you have the full blown SATS nonsense where 21st century will be tested using 19th century tools.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 08:00:40 +0000

Yes well – this woffly (sp)language in education has been around for a long time – the difference is that schools, teachers and leaders have had time to scaffold the long winded achievement outcomes in the curriculum into bite sized learning intentions that can be measured and that teachers and students can work towards. Years in fact, before being pinged by ero for not having it in place. It takes time to get it right.

In order to understand what that year 4 ’statement’ actually looks like, involves a tonne of work to break it down and to really pinpoint what it will look like for each school. So, therefore consistency across the sector will be somewhat different, and moderation can not happen in terms of each standard until this breakdown of what it means and what it will look like when a child reaches it, has happened. Otherwise you are really not doing it properly.

Given how many stds there are, its a mare of a job if it is to be done properly.

Instead, schools will find that a major waste of time and a pain in the butt (remember they have done it before – twice, for the old curric and now the new one), so will attempt to align it to what they have already – and this is where it makes consistency across the sector tricky – hence, (because the minister will soon start to get reports from ero etc that schools fail to be consistent in what it looks like across the country, which will stuff up her results) there will be a neat little national test for each age level developed to address the inconsistency – and then, because the ‘test’ will show how “bad” teachers are, performance pay will be introduced.

THEN, the minister (Tolley or some other such incompetent puppet) will swing from the rafters blurting on about how great they are for ’saving our kids’ with nat stds, and see everyone, we knew teachers were not up to it so we just ‘had’ to bring a national test – and we just ‘had’ to bring in perf pay to bring those bad teachers into line…

Quite an obvious ploy really…

By: A Mother

A Mother — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 01:23:04 +0000

@ghostwhowalksnz
What was the ’standard’ when Ms Tolley stated she was ‘qualified’ to be Education Minister.

She said she was qualified as she was a mum. I can hunt for the artical where she said it later if you wish.

By: BLiP

BLiP — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:21:07 +0000

So, under Chopper Tolley's "standards" the text could be either an extract from James Joyce's Ulysses or Colin Tompson's The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley . You couldn't make this stuff up!

By: ghostwhowalksnz

ghostwhowalksnz — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:38 +0000

What was the ’standard’ when Ms Tolley stated she was ‘qualified’ to be Education Minister.
Strangely on the Parliament website , she lists no qualifications at all, and outside of committee assignments lists no community organisations.
Is she from Mars?

By: D14

D14 — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:58:54 +0000

Why is seeing the dart board a prerequisite?
Surely all children deserve to attempt to succeed?

By: Ianmac

Ianmac — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:27:44 +0000

Each teacher will be supplied with a dart board. Each child will be presented with 3 darts. The child will throw the darts and assuming that they can see the board clearly, the points scored will determine the ranking on the National Test. Early trials have shown that the spread of scores will be reasonably aligned instead of a very time consuming method outlined from Nat Stds above.