ETL504 Module 1

What is your understanding of leadership? How do you show leadership in your school?

Leadership is to motivate direct and inspire people in such a way that they are able to work effectively and hopefully harmoniously together.

Last year I had the opportunity to teach VCE business management. In this subject I looked at change management theory (year 12, unit 4). Part of this was to look at the role of leadership in change. I think that one of the most important times to have good leadership is when an organisation is undergoing change.

To take a snippet out of one of my class PowerPoint’s…

If change is to be successfully implemented, it is important that there is an effective leadership team in place to drive and oversee change. Successful leaders (change agents) must:

•          Articulate the organisational vision for the future (‘this is what we want to achieve and this is how it will be done’)
•          Motivate and inspire staff to work towards successful change
•          Communicate their expectations of others
•          Have strong and effective communication and interpersonal skills
•          Have effective and clear plans and strategies developed before undertaking the change
•          Gather the necessary resources to implement the change

I think to be a good leader you have to be willing to also do what you are asking of others, be the example. There is nothing worse than having to follow someone you feel is being a hypocrite. It is very hard to follow someone you do not respect. 

After reading the chapter from Marzano, Water & McNulty (2005) I believe that I am either a servant leader or a situational leader. My desire to help others drives my leadership. However, I think that within the classroom the way I lead different student groups is situational based on need and ability. I think this often transfers over to how I lead in other senarios.

Not currently being in any leadership position it made the survey quite hard to truthfully answer. I just reflected on my previous work situation, however, it came out quite negative. I think it says more about the poor leadership I perceived rather than my actions under that leadership. Maybe I did it wrong…

Using the 7 steps, select one of the scenarios below and comment on the forum on how you could solve the problem using the steps outlined.

Secondary - You are in a large secondary school of more than 800 students and it is extremely difficult to plan and implement any collaborative teaching opportunities as the Head of Teaching and Learning insists on equity so that a class in a subject must do or have the same resources as every other class in that subject in a year level. How could you implement collaborative teaching?

1. Definition: Sharing resources equitably across a large school in a way that enables collaborative teaching. 

2. Data collection: Interviewing teachers on current practice. Identifying what resources are currently being used. 

3. Cause analysis: Head of Teaching and Learning wants equity, limited resources 

4. Solution planning + implementation: Possible solutions include-

All units being collaboratively planned at start of year (or term)/ end of previous year (term). To share resources equally rotation of units could occur so only one or two classes are doing the topic at the same time. Resources could be primarily digital and shared via a faculty wiki/ dropbox/ pathfinder. Implementation should be started off with one faculty across one year group to test if the solution works. 

5. Evaluate the effects: Has collaborative planning in this way been realistic? What worked/ what didn’t? Did the quality of teaching improve? Was every class able to access all of the resources?

6. Standardisation: Make this process of shared resources standard across faculties and year groups. 

7. Evaluation of process: How did our planning and decision making process work, did we communicate decisions and reasons effectively across teams?

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). Some theories and theorists on leadership. School leadership that works: from research to results (pp. 13-27). Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved February 24, 2014 from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/docDetail.action?docID=10089219

Change Management from Hannah-Lee Obst

In the news...

Stitson, R. (2014, February 24). Can comic books become serious texts? The Age p. 14

Assignment: A case for literacy learning

With the introduction of the Australian Curriculum and the associated AusVELS syllabus teachers have been reviewing what and how they teach. The demand for literacy to be a general capability sees science teachers considering what literacy in science is and how reading can go beyond the textbook. In the essay written for this subject  the role of the teacher librarian was critically examined in supporting the teaching and learning of science. It was demonstrate how the application of children’s and young adult fiction can enhance the learning of literacy in the science curriculum. This is reinforced by suggestions of teaching and learning strategies to support literacy in this curriculum area. 

The references used for this assignment are found below.

Reference

Adair, V. (2014). Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry. Retrieved January 28, 2014, from ReadWriteThink: http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/earth-verse-using-science-1141.html?tab=1#tabs

Austalian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2013a). Science: Year 10. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from Austalian Curriculum v5.1: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Science/Curriculum/F-10#level10

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2013b). Literacy. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from Australian Curriculum v5.1: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Literacy/Continuum#page=10

Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) & Australian School Library Association (ASLA). (2004). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from http://www.alia.org.au/policies/TLstandards.pdf

Bond, G. (1994). Honesty and hope: Presenting human rights issues to teenagers through fiction. Children's Literature in Education, 25(1), 41-53.

Booker, K. (2012). Using picturebooks to empower and inspire readers and writers in the upper primary classroom. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 20(2), i-xiv.

Brozo, W. (2012). Building bridges for boys: Graphic novels in the content classroom. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(6), 550.

Derouet, L. (2010). Using picture books in middle years classrooms. Literacy learning: The middle years, 18(1), 3.

Fang, Z., & Wei, Y. (2010). Improving middle school students' science literacy through reading infusion. The Journal of Educational Research, 103(4), 262-273.

Giorgis, C. (1999). The power of reading picture books aloud to secondary students. The Clearing House, 73(1), 51-53.

Griffith, P. (2010). Graphic novels in the secondary classroom and school libraries. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(3), 181-189.

Haycock, K. (2007). Collaboration: Critial success factors for student learning. School Libraries Worldwide, 13(1), 25-35.

Jewett, P., Wilson, J., & Vanderburg, M. (2011). The unifiying power of a whole-school read. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(6), 414-424.

Keller, E. (2007). Genesis Alpha. Library Media Connection, 26(1), 68.

Kunai, I., & Ryan, C. (2007). Manga as a teaching tool: Comic books without borders. Paper submitted to CATESOL State Conference. San Diego. Retrieved from http://www.catesol.org/07Kunai.pdf

Kuntz, K. (2003, May). Pathfinders: Helping students find paths to information. Retrieved February 11, 2014, from Information Today, Inc: http://www.infotoday.com/mmschools/may03/kuntz.shtml

La Marca, S. (2000). The reading environment and the teacher librarian. Access, 14(3), 15-17.

Lane, D. (2014). Curriculum based teaching [ETL402 Module 6.2]. Retrieved January 28, 2014, from Charles Sturt University website: http://interact.csu.edu.au/portal/site/ETL402_201390_W_D/page/e92933f3-8ebb-4bb1-00ba-d690bf47ec01

Marcoux, E., & Loertscher, D. (2009). The role of a school library in a school's reading program. Teacher Librarian, 37(1), 10-14.

Nauman, A., & Shaw, E. (1994). Sci-fi science. Science Activities, 31(3), 18-21.

NSW Department of School Education. (1997). Teaching literacy in science in year 7. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from NSW Department of Education and Communities: http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/science/assets/pdf/documents/litsciy7.pdf

Roeder, J. (2010). The manga guide to physics. American Journal of Physics, 78(1), 126.

Serafini, F. (2011). Creating space for children's literature. The Reading Teacher, 65(1), 30-34.

Thibault, M. (2006). The student pathfinder. Retrieved February 11, 2014, from Learn NC: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/968

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). (2014). Science. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from AusVELS: http://ausvels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Science/Overview/Rationale-and-Aims

Children's literature cited:

Bernard, B. (2006). Genesis. New Zealand: Longacre Press.

Huxley, A. (1932). Brave new world. Chatto & Windus: Great Britain.

Larson, G. (1999). There's a hair in my dirt! New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Michaels, R. (2007). Genesis alpha. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Nitta, H., & Takatsu, K. (2009). The manga guide to physics. San Francisco: No Starch Press and Ohmsha .

Pryor, M. (2012). 10 Futures. North Sydney: Random House Australia.

Scieszka, J., & Smith, L. (2004). Science verse. New York: Viking.

Takemura, M. (2009). The manga guide to molecular biology. San Francisco: No Starch Press and Ohmsha.

ETL402 Module 5

Educating teachers about multi-literacies

Recently the teachers of our school had a day of PD related to literacy across the Australian curriculum. As an introduction to multi-literacies were we each given a double sided A3 sheet with scanned texts from 30 different sources (including sheet music, formula for specialist math, street map, poem, French extract, road symbols, cricket scores and stats, etc.). We were asked to identify the text, what its likely source is, what literacy skills were needed to decode the text and how easy each of these was for us to read. While most of us could not read every text type (I have no idea how to read cricket stats) we were able to suggest skills needed to read each.

How would you support classroom teachers to ‘access and learn more literate practices’?

Whenever I trial something new with my class and there is some degree of success I like to share that activity with others. If it is a digital program this may require some level of educating them how to use it. Most recently I have been able to share about using pathfinders and Google docs.

I currently work as a science teacher and as I have been studying the roles of the TL I have been introducing new literacies to my science department to bring about changes there. A problem we faced last year was that we did not change to an Australian curriculum textbook meaning the content in the textbook we were using was sometimes miss-matched with the level. For one topic in particular which was missing from the textbook I developed a bound resource with multi-literacies in mind, which contained:

• Selected parts of the ‘energy’ chapter in an Australian curriculum text

• A place to take class notes within the textbook

• Parts of a physics anime (comic), some text boxes were removed for students to fill in with their own thoughts or predictions

• Experiments and a place to include any spread sheets and graphs produced in excel (or similar)

• Links to related games and videos from Scootle and other sources.

• Inclusion of assignment details (the production of a music video, PowerPoint, comic or other media to explain a form of energy to a group of younger students).

This was given out in print form and students also had access to a digital form.

This was given to other teachers so they could also use it with their class if needed.  This took a lot of time and effort to do on my own. If we had a teacher librarian at the school collaboration on the creation of such a resource would have reduced the effort of an individual teacher. From what I have seen at my school teachers have couple of big projects which they put a lot of time and effort into planning over school holidays and then the rest of the time they use whatever material is available to get the job done. Planning time during the semester is not as abundant as the school holidays; a collaborative planning relationship with a TL could alleviate this issue a bit.