1/2007 | 2/2007 | 3/2007 | 4/2007 | 1/2008 | 2/2008 | 3/2008 | 1/2009
Jeni Mawter
Jeni Mawter is a well known writer who keeps kids in laughter [and indeed, the adults]. With an MA in Children’s Literature, Jeni is a master at humour, perhaps one of the hardest genres to write. In this article, she shares some sobering thoughts about both writing and appreciating humour.
Humour in literature for young learners is often given the moniker of bum humour. Our culture tends to dismiss humorous literature as lightweight and unworthy, thus effectively taking a critical process and denigrating it. Humorous texts are not easy to write but when a humorous text makes it, you can bet that critical and creative thinking are part of its success. We can agree that thinking involves inquiry, osing problems, acquiring and questioning information, thinking about possibilities, making decisions and forming judgments, justifying conclusions, reflecting on and refining ideas, seeing and valuing other perspectives, ethical reasoning, becoming aware of human existence, imagination and creativity, innovation and risk‐taking. As well, being able to show and value enterprise and innovation and being able to engage and respond to the world is crucial for human existence.
These attributes form the matrix of a clever and successful humorous text – texts that are worthy of being included in the language arts curriculum. Humour requires us to be flexible in our thinking and it often requires us to think deeply in order to unpack the message and to engage in a perspective that is often alternative points of view. We must compare facts with other alternatives, observe and interpret, use logic and reason to imply, value and judge (or not judge). As well, we have to cope with contradictions, predict what may happen and develop options.
The critical thinking seen in humour means that minds have to be open to change (based on extra information, opinions, facts or reasoning) even when faced with conflicting information.
Humorous texts have various levels of complexity so that as students move through the curriculum they can explore texts of increasing complexity and variety (from picture books to novels, plays, film, television programs, comics, graphics through to conversation).
Both Costa and Kallick (2000, 2001) recognize that an appreciation of humour is a vital component to finding solutions using the ‘Habits of Mind’ approach.
A final word! Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was perhaps the first to recognise that tragedy is not superior to comedy ‐ that they are of equal importance:
Humour is the only test of gravity and gravity of
humour; for a subject which will not bear raillery is
suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious
Jennie Bales
Rubrics are a valid form of assessment especially when students are actively engaged in designing their own rubrics for self-assessment. They can be a means in aiding students to construct their own learning pathways and to set meaningful and purposeful goals for future learning. Jennie Bales, Teacher Librarian of the Year 2006, offers some thoughts on student developed rubrics. A fuller paper can be accessed at Bales, J 2006, ‘Student-designed rubrics for purposeful assessment’, Visions of learning: ASLA online II conference proceedings, ASLA.
Formative assessment and the rubric
Authentic assessment is becoming increasingly recognised as an effective means to assess students’ capabilities and understandings and provide different and significant information to add to a teacher’s assessment toolkit. More traditional summative assessment, in the form of standardised and classroom-based testing, focusses on measuring what students recognize and recall, often with their knowledge being applied in isolation or out of context.
Formative assessment focusses on students using their knowledge to perform effectively, hence the assessment focusses on the ability to apply knowledge and skills rather than measure the actual knowledge and skills gained. From this perspective, authentic assessment supports current trends in Australian education of which the promotion of deep thinking and problem solving are foremost.
One strategy that supports authentic assessment and the development of deep thinking and problem solving is the rubric.
A rubric is a type of scoring guide that identifies specific areas of performance and differentiates between levels of development in those performance areas.
Rubrics provide a formalised structure to guide subjective assessment as they provide a means to measure gradual progress in students’ learning. They can be used as an authentic assessment tool for:
· evaluating student learning and attainment of outcomes
· identifying and clarifying specific performance expectations and providing attainment goals for student aspiration
They should be clear, easy to use and understand. The included criteria need to align with identified goals.
Three areas of content need to be included in a rubric:
· outcomes or identified learning goals,
· rating range or scale and
· indicators of achievement as evidence.
Rose (2006-1995 para. 3) argues that rubrics can become powerful motivational tools when they are shared with students prior to commencing a project or assignment. Clarke (1998 p.10) believes that sharing learning intentions with students ensures that every pupil is focussed on the purpose of the task and that it encourages pupil involvement and comment on their own learning. Rubric assessments developed prior to, or in the early stages, of a learning task provide clearly articulated criteria for students to aspire to and work towards. As Clarke (1998 p.47) notes:
Without the ‘secret’ knowledge of the learning intention … children have been deprived of information which will not only enable them to carry out the task more effectively, they have also been denied the opportunity to self-evaluate, communicate this to the teacher, set targets for themselves and get to understand their own learning needs: in other work words, to think intelligently about their own learning, rather than ‘finding’ out what the teacher wants, and doing it.
Self-evaluation
The importance of inviting children to create success criteria involves them still further in their own learning. They are being asked, effectively, to link the learning intention with the task instructions. They then have to decide how the two are synthesised to create success criteria – a much more challenging learning experience than simply being given the information (Clarke 2001, p.22).
A further enabling action, building on from the clear articulation of learning goals in the rubric, is to ensure that not only do students have access to assessment information early in a project but also have the opportunity to self-evaluate their progress.
A highly effective strategy to ensure
that students:
a) understand the task
b) understand the learning goals and
c) understand the form of assessment and the language used
is for them to construct their own rubric for self-evaluation. If they know the purpose of the task, in terms of learning and how it will be carried out, they have a context for developing successful criteria.
Teacher librarians can be powerful partners in helping students to design their own rubrics. Through identifying criteria based on an information skills/research process, students can be encouraged to design a rating system based on levels of achievement.
For example, the students might complete one outcome by adding examples of evidence /indicators for ‘Define the topic’ (limit evidence/indicators to two or three examples). Experience has shown that students find it easier to start at
the ‘average’ or ‘satisfactory’ level and
then identify evidence above and below that standard.
A reflection
Educators need to be confident in their own design and application of rubrics as part of their assessment toolkit before embarking on a process that fully involves students at the construction stages. Students who have been exposed to rubrics generated by their class teachers will be better able to contextualise their understandings in the development of an assessment rubric. A collaborative approach ensures that all students have an active part in their own assessment and are fully aware of the set of standards they need to work towards.
There are a number of quality websites that offer examples of rubrics to adapt in all curriculum areas as well as software that also allows a teacher to input the information and then automatically generate a rubric.
The bibliography provides a starting point for further exploration of the use of rubrics as part of the student assessment.
JB
References
Clarke, S 1998, Targeting assessment in the primary classroom, Hodder &Stoughton, London.
Clarke, S 2001, Unlocking formative assessment: Practical strategies for enhancing pupils’ learning in the primary classroom, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Rose, M 2006-1995, ‘Make room for rubrics’, in Teachers’ timely topics, Scholastic, viewed 22 January 2006, <http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/assessment/roomforubrics.htm>
Bibliography
‘Ideas and rubrics’ 2000, in Instructional Internet, Chicago Public Schools, viewed 22 January 2006, <http://intranet.cps.k12.il.us/Assessments/Ideas_and_Rubrics/ideas_and_rubrics.html>.
Rubistar 2006-2000, in 4teachers, University of Kansas, viewed 22 January 2006, <http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php>.
Schrock, K. 1995-2006, ‘Teacher helpers: Assessment and rubric information’, in Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Educators, Discovery Education, viewed 22 January 2006, <http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html>.
Stone.web: ‘Automating authentic assessment with rubrics’ 2001, in Stone.web, Stone Middle School, viewed 22 January 2006,
<http://stone.web.brevard.k12.fl.us/html/comprubric.html#Recommendations>.
Undertaking research at post-graduate level, whilst working full time, particularly as a teacher, may well seem a daunting task, but it is something I managed to do - without taking leave. This is a personal story, and it might sound rather smug, but bear with me, the story is short and the moral may be useful.
I’m not pretending that life was not a grind for a lot of the time during my courses of study. Of course, postgraduate study at the level of Master and Doctoral degrees cannot be achieved without dedication, discipline and putting in the hours – which is what I did – at night, weekends and throughout most of the school holidays. But what I should confess is the private pleasure I experienced in recapturing my concentration in the process. Isn’t it true that constant interruption of thought is the very essence of parenthood, of classroom teaching and especially of library work? Whilst I claim to have exerted dedication and self-discipline, perhaps I should also admit to an obsessive, preoccupied immersion and the satisfying intensity of orchestrating and negotiating my way through the intricacies of a very large problem-solving project, in my own, uninterrupted realm of deep thought. I should explain that I returned to study at a very favourable time of my life and within a very propitious set of circumstances, which, together, benefited the quality of both the study and the experience.
My four children had all become reasonably independent with lives of their own, my partner had taken up rowing and I had the benefit of almost two decades of professional experience during a period of great social and cultural change.
Study and academic research gave me the opportunity and where-with-all to make sense of these changes, opening sight lines in and around the future. But that wasn’t all. Because my workplace was my data pool, life there suddenly became hyper-interesting. It wasn’t just that I was wallowing, more often drowning, in data-rich whirlpool of culture, politics and power (integral to a study of communications and technologies), I also came to realise that I was developing a split identity.
As librarian and a member of the school community, I was an insider but as an academic researcher, bringing critical self-reflexive awareness to my inquiry, I was simultaneously an outsider. With this dual means of being ‘in the know’, my loyalty hovered perilously around the paradox of sometimes being complicit in the very situations under critique.
But this is what made life so interesting, and surely it is this very ambiguity that marks the post-modern researcher – immersed as an actor in the daily particulars of institutional life on the one hand and involved in a critical re-thinking about the institution on the other.
Diplomacy in practitioner research
Which brings me now to the more prosaic politics and diplomacy of in-house research.
Bear in mind that your colleagues may not necessarily share your interest in, or conviction about, the benefits of your research. Remember that you are ploughing their field as well as your own. Tread carefully.
Keep your Principal informed about your processes as well as your progress. As manager of the estate, he/she may perceive your research as having all the potential of a public audit. Clarify, early in the piece, whether study leave could be an option at a later stage. After all, the Principal, responsible for the smooth running of the estate, employed you for a particular purpose and may be sensitive about sanctioning your absence and creating a precedent.
In retrospect, I have to smile at the heady breathlessness of covering all contingencies and I wonder why my family never told me to get a life. Perhaps they could see that I was beyond redemption. Would it have helped if I had taken leave, taken a break to hasten the work along, or at least to get a perspective on myself? I don’t think so. The truth is, I loved it. I couldn’t bear to stay away.
So, the moral of my story is this. If you are going to embark on a research project that will be as time-consuming and demanding as a Master or Doctoral degree should be, set it up so that it will be an experience you can enjoy, so that the rewards might be found in the process as much as in the final relief of a satisfying completion. Check that your circumstances and timing will allow you to make the most of this adventurous opportunity.
Don’t lose heart, nurture that little flame of enthusiasm and courage, and if you need to take leave – ask for it.
SB
Judy O’Connell is the John H Lee Memorial Award Winner for 2007. Judy won this prestigious award for the innovative work she has done within the Parramatta Diocese in bringing teaching and executive teams together with students in gainfully using the power of Web 2.0. Her following article examines the power of Web 2.0.Listening as a learning and teaching strategy
Teachers in general have reservations about using audiobooks which appear to stem from several perceptions (Cox 1996):