Once More Into the Blog, Dear Readers

The Remains of the Dock

Events have rendered me unwilling to think about education and despairing of teachers in Ontario ever being treated as more than technicians in the near future.  I have not written about education for many months now, but the little girl next door is leaving her Montessori school to start grade one at our local school.   My niece is half way through high school and two young cousins are returning to the francophone primary school.  We talk about school:  what their parents like; what works for the children; the inequities; the little miracles wrought by their teachers; the rules, ridiculous and important; the children’s biases and prejudices.  For the most part both the parents and children recognise that compromises have to be made in what is essentially still an industrial model of education but sometimes I hear frustration in their voices.

I am surrounded by teachers, too.  Primary, Montessori, kindergarten to grade 8 French, high school language, supply, university psychology, adult ESL teacher trainers, graduate supervisors.  They all have their delights and concerns as they return to the classroom.  Sometimes one or two will honour me by turning over a problem with me or asking my advice and I get some insight into their particular corners of the teaching profession.

All of us see things which don’t make sense, which hinder teachers in their teaching, students in their learning and parents in their support of both.  So inevitably I want to write again to point out the illogical, the wasteful and the effective events taking place in our schools.  I want to talk about what does work, especially the simple easy techniques.

I have been looking over the many thoughtful comments I have received from readers.  Please keep them coming; even when I disagree with you, they provoke me to think and consider other possibilities.  Writing in a vacuum is a dangerous thing as the writer may begin to believe everything she writes.

Watch this space for more about equity for the learning disabled, sense in teaching second languages and reflections on morality.  I hope to eventually have some comments to make on university teaching, too.  One might say that teaching is a new discovery in all university faculties, except, perhaps the education faculties.  And I am not too sure about them!

Rebuilding the Dock

What WERE they smoking?

My last post was simply Ontario’s Grade Five music curriculum.  In fairness to the Ministry of Education & Training, the grade five curriculum assumes that the earlier elementary music curriculum has been followed.  If we assume that these children were properly instructed in the grade one music curriculum, of which the sample below is a small part, and in all the grades in between, it might be reasonable to hope that grade five students could accomplish the goals of their curriculum.

Part of the Grade One Music Curriculum

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC to be acquired in Grade 1.

• duration: fast and slow tempi; rhythm versus beat; two and four beats per bar ( and metres);

quarter note (oral prompt: “ta”), eighth note(s) (oral prompt: “ti-ti”), quarter rest; simple rhythmic

ostinato (e.g., “ta, ta, ti-ti, ta”)

• pitch: high and low sounds; unison; melodic contour; simple melodic patterns using the notes “mi”,

“so”, and “la” (e.g., the “so–mi–la–so–mi” pitch pattern in some children’s songs)

• dynamics and other expressive controls: loud, soft; a strong sound for a note or beat (accent); smooth

and detached articulation

• timbre: vocal quality (e.g., speaking voice, singing voice), body percussion, sound quality of instruments

(e.g., non-pitched and pitched percussion), environmental and found sounds

• texture/harmony: single melodic line in unison (monophony)

• form: phrase, call and response

If you wish to see the whole elementary arts curriculum for Ontario, go to: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/arts.html

Learning this music curriculum would enhance the academic curriculum.  One obvious example is the way music teaches and requires the recognition of patterns, a skill necessary in mathematics and science.  The skills acquired in paying attention to each other and the music would transfer to other classroom work.  And music, like the other arts is just plain fun when you have some skill.

What’s the Problem with the Music Curriculum?

The difficulty is that there is no requirement that teachers have any knowledge of music before they start their preservice training, nor is music a mandatory course during that training.  Even if a student teacher were to take the music course, it might amount to a half-year course (as at the University of Ottawa) and be focused on the teaching of music, not the learning of it.

Nipissing University cleverly offers a course on music education through technology using MIDI soft and hardware.  See below for details.  This is practical and helpful to willing and non-musical teachers.  It is, however, a makeshift solution to meeting the demands of the curriculum without a teacher who is a specialist in music.  It also depends on the technology being available in the school.  When overhead projectors are becoming scarce and specialist music teachers are even scarcer, it is hard to imagine the technology becoming available.

How much Training is Needed to Teach the Curriculum Successfully?

Even some musical training is not adequate to the task; after a year of singing lessons, I would find it very difficult to teach the music curriculum without support.  So what do teachers do?  What they can.  They select the elements of the curriculum that are possible for them to teach and do those.  For some teachers it may only be music appreciation, for others it may include rhythm or even a smattering of the technical requirements.  My guess is that only students whose teachers have had a strong musical education will come close to meeting the curriculum expectations.

Why Propose the Unrealistic?

Why did the ministry set these expectations?   As Glen Brown points out in his comment, there is a huge assumption that all the resources are available.  The expectations look great on paper but nobody cares if they are implemented, except the overly conscientious teacher.  I wonder how long it has been since the writers set foot in a classroom and  – what they were smoking as they wrote.

Nipissing University

Music Education through Technology – This course will introduce students to basic music concepts through the use of MIDI technology.  The primary goal is to provide students with the rudimentary skills necessary to teach music in Junior Kindergarten to Grade 8 classrooms.

Related articles

• Music helps students get handle on fractions (sfgate.com)
• Music Education: Enabling the Freedom to Create (bnelsonmusic.wordpress.com)
• Doug! (gottschalkclass.wordpress.com)
• Music in Education (moderndaychris.wordpress.com)
• Venezuela’s Music Ed System: El Sistema (improvinsights.com)
• Improv Quote of the Day: The Core of the Curriculum (improvinsights.com)
• San Bruno school uses music to boost math scores (mercurynews.com)

A Musical Mission: Impossible

Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part Two of Three

INTERPRETING COMMENTS ON THE REPORT CARD

In vain we begged students and parents to focus on the learning skills and comments instead of the marks. Asking them to focus on the comments proved to be a mistake in some cases and here is why.

GENERIC COMMENTS

Teachers are asked to list the students’ strengths, weaknesses and next steps in the comments section, using verbs and adverbs from a number of suggested lists. They do not have to be used, but a teacher who does use them is less likely to be asked to redo a comment. It is accepted practice to write a generic remark for all the students and then individualize each one with appropriate adverbs and perhaps more personal next steps. Some teachers get very clever at writing the generic comment. The generic child in the report card program is called Casper. Here is an example of the generic comment: “Casper has demonstrated an understanding of the usefulness of titles and subtitles in anticipating the topics covered in difficult text. He has difficulty using context, the titles and other vocabulary to infer meaning for unknown words. He is encouraged to read more non-fiction and take time to reflect on difficult language.” In the first sentence, “thoroughly” can be inserted after demonstrated or “a thorough” can replace “a” to create an appropriate comment for a level 4 student. If Casper is having difficulty, then “not yet” can be inserted between “has” and “demonstrated” or more mildly “rarely” or “occasionally” might be inserted. The teacher might have written the second sentence because the majority of students were having the same problem and part of the solution might be encapsulated in the third sentence. Again, the second sentence might be modified by suggesting that Casper has “some difficulty” or “little difficulty” in which case he may be “encouraged to continue to read …” in the third sentence. The program will change Casper to the child’s name and put in the correct pronouns and modifiers. Occasionally it makes a mistake and when we don’t catch it in the proofreading, there is an indignant student.

PEDAGOGICAL BUZZWORDS

You may be wondering about all the stuff about sub titles, context and inferring. These are some of the buzzwords in a new (and excellent) approach to teaching reading, called Balanced Literacy. The teacher is signaling to the principal or vice-principal who will be reading and signing her report cards that she is very much au courant with the latest and greatest trend in teaching to the extent of using it and evaluating it in her classroom. It’s also a signal to any parents who like to research the latest in teaching. Why would she bother? Teachers are under some pressure to be seen to be aware of and impressed by whatever the latest thing in education is. This is because principals are pressured to have the latest and best in their schools and so on. Sometimes it is sufficient to have the outward garb such as the Word Wall of Balanced Literacy and it is rather funny to see educators faking it. In the best schools, whatever comes across the teachers’ desks is evaluated for usefulness and integrated as appropriate. The report card comments may seem mechanical and awkward. They make anyone who likes good writing shudder, however parents were promised accountability and for some, that means report cards being the same while being individualized. There are times when doing a good job in education feels like being the old man and his donkey. Perhaps we listen too much to everyone’s opinion instead of trusting those experienced and well-educated professionals in the classrooms to pose the problems and propose the solutions. That’s a discussion for another day.

For More Information:

Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part One of Three to understand how marks are derived. Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part Three of Three to reflect on how each of the three parties involved can work on any issues brought up by the report card. R on the Report Card Does Not Mean F (Failure) to understand what an R on the report card means.

Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part One of Three

UNDERSTANDING THE ELEMENTARY REPORT CARD

You have received your child’s report card and on Thursday evening or Friday morning of this week you will be meeting with the teacher. If this is the first time your child has received a report card in Ontario, you may have some questions. To save you time in the fifteen minutes allotted with the teacher, I will try to clarify a few things below.

LEARNING SKILLS: The Heart of the Report Card

Teachers take the learning skills section of the report card very seriously. Twenty, even ten years ago, part of a mark in some subjects might have been for homework completion, effort or participation. That is no longer allowed. Teachers may not even take off marks for late assignments. The only place that those issues may be addressed now is in the learning skills section.Learning Skills per report card The nine learning skills are not a frill about non-academic issues but skills that go to the heart of your child’s long-term success in school and probably in the work world. Take a look and ask yourself if these aren’t qualities employers look for when they are hiring or promoting. I have attached the detailed lists of learning skills here so you can see what teachers take into account when they assign a Not Satisfactory, Satisfactory, Good or Excellent to each skill.

MARKS: the teachers use levels 1 to 4 for assessment

Let’s look at the marks assigned to the subjects. Teachers are required to assess students on a scale of 1 to 4 (I have covered R in a previous post R on the Report Card Does Not Mean F (Failure)). A level 3 is the provincial standard and should mean that the student has successfully mastered the material and skills. The key word here is mastered as opposed to crammed sufficiently to fake it on a test and then forget it. A level 2 means that the student is approaching mastery but needs more practice, time or effort. Usually the student can achieve a level 3 with more work. At a level 1 a student is floundering and unclear on the subject matter or weak in the skills. It is possible he might achieve a level 3, but a lot of help and extra work may be needed. If a student has a number of level 1s, parents and teachers should be prepared to discuss options for the next year such as retention, remediation or an individual education plan. A level 4 means that the student is regularly going beyond mastery in this area. It does not necessarily mean that the student is working above grade level although that is one possibility. Depending on the subject, the teacher might consider differentiating the program for some topics for this student. You might also discover that some of the work has been open-ended, allowing the student to go further in his work. BUT on the report card the marks are not shown as levels. It would make sense for the marks on elementary report cards to be written as levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, but they aren’t. Below is the chart the ministry produced in 1998 instructing the Boards of Education in Ontario about putting marks on report cards. Appendix B: Provincial Guide for Grading

Level	Definition	Letter Grade (Grades 1 to 6)	Percentage Mark (Grades 7 and 8)
Level 4	The student has demonstrated the required knowledge and skills. Achievement exceeds the provincial standard.	A+ A A–	90–100 85–89 80–84
Level 3	The student has demonstrated most of the required knowledge and skills. Achievement meets the provincial standard.	B+ B B-	77–79 73–76 70–72
Level 2	The student has demonstrated some of the required knowledge and skills. Achievement approaches the provincial standard.	C+ C C–	67–69 63–66 60–62
Level 1	The student has demonstrated some of the required knowledge and skills in limited ways. Achievement falls much below the provincial standard.	D+ D D–	57–59 53–56 50–52
R or Below 50	The student has not demonstrated the required knowledge and skills. Extensive remediation is required.	R	Below 50

CONFUSED?

The parent of a student in a grade one to six class shouldn’t be too confused; the A, B, C, Ds of old more or less match up with the new levels and the definitions help. The R makes sense. If your child is in grade seven or eight and you are trying to calculate how they got a certain percentage in a subject, stop! If the teacher followed orders, she assessed him using the 1 to 4 marking scheme, following the definitions listed in the chart and then converted the assessment to the meaningless percentage on the right. You need to remember that the percentage IS meaningless unless you interpret it according to the definition provided by the level.

IS THIS LESS CONFUSING?

The Ottawa Carleton District School Board tried to clarify things by telling teachers to use only specific numbers such as 52, 55 and 58 for level 1 and so on through the levels. Although it was a tad confusing for parents, that bit was relatively easy to explain. What was more difficult was the 20% spread for level 4 when all the other levels had a 10% spread. This made an A+ worth a heck of a lot more than an A-. Some top students began to feel cheated, especially initially when the top mark was 95%.

For More Information:

Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part Two of Three to understand how comments are generated. Getting Ready for the Teacher-Parent Interview: Part Three of Three to reflect on how each of the three parties involved can work on any issues brought up by the report card. R on the Report Card Does Not Mean F (Failure) to understand what an R on the report card means.