Factors affecting student performance
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administrator on Feb 1, 2011 09:02 am
Over the years there have been numerous interventions to raise literacy achievement rates. However, the elusive 1/3 of students continues to underperform. Could it be that our interventions are not targeting the right areas? What really are the factors affecting student performance on the Grade Four Literacy Test?Looking forward to your responses.Jennifer, Maureen and NoveletteUSAID/Jamaica Basic Education Project
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Hello Everyone,I have been following all the postings. Quite interesting the wide and varied areas for consideration.
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Feb 3, 2011
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Comments (18)
Performance
Let us be guided by the perspective of the executives of the Special Education Unit, who posit that we may have a higher proportion of students with exceptionalities than previously believed. The analysis suggest that the cohort of children with exceptionalities could be in the upper range of 10-20%. In light of this there will be the need for special interventions to address the needs of this group. This is possible with targeted programmes of human resource development and establishing and sustaining accesspoints and resource centres to cater to the needs of these students and their practitioners
Performance
SteveG,You have touched on an important factor- that of the identifcation of children with special educational needs in the regular system. I agree with you that targeted interventions are needed for these children and those who teach them.Notwithstanding, there is still a 10 percent, if we use your upper figure of 20 percent, which have not been addressed.A point of interest, of the chldren from spec ed schools who sat the GFLT in 2010, 85% mastered the word recognition, 60% mastered the reading comprehension and 46% the writing task. I am sorry that I do not the data regarding the overall performance of these students, but the available data was informative.Jennifer SilveraUSAID/Jamaica Basic Education project
I agree with you to
I agree with you to a certain extent. Parents must be motivated to actively get involved in their children's learning and then held accountable when they fail to do so. But what can be done in our classrooms to facilitate literacy development? I suggest that teachers need to use the resources that are used to decorate many of our Primary school classrooms. Too many books are just lying around idle in many classrooms. Many students have not developed the skills to read independently, just for fun. Too many teachers are not allowing students to learn; they tell everything, read everything and teach all students at the same level. Differentiation is never practised and consequently, many children are left behind. Do teachers understand the importance of differentiating instruction? Perhaps a series of cluster workshops demonstrating how to teach literacy to students at all levels in one classroom will help.
Performance and Mental Health
The emotional stress which is a spin-off of abuse- inlcuding neglect, and constant exposure to violence is a factor which should be explored. Many persons in the wider population are often ignorant of the occassion of childhood depression and educators are no exception.Therefore children suffering from depression often go largely unidentified and the condition untreated. Underperformance is one possible indicator of a larger mental health issue.Jennifer USAID/Jamaica Basic Education Project
I agree
I agree wholeheartedly with Jennifer. Many children whose teachers refer for counselling because of academic underachievement have mental illnesses related to unresolved grief and poor bonding and attachment to primary caregivers.Pauline
Improving Student Performance
Today I want to concentrate on the teaching of reading. Anyone who has the following can teach reading: Knowledge of the linguistic system, Knowledge of reading components, Knowledge of effective practices for teaching each component of reading, Knowledge of methods for evaluating student learning. Reflection of teaching, Sylvia Linan-Thompson, Ph.D.In order to teach reading some of us have the above, and many of us teaching reading do not. The following are a few bullet points that will work for most teachers even if they have limited teacher training. I am choosing to address those teachers who are teaching with a good heart with inadequate teacher training. I am doing this because thirty years ago, not many of us knew any child who was unable to read, write and add. We had to recite many chapters of the Bible, convey many long messages for our parents and return from the village shop with the correct change after purchasing several items from a mental shopping list. My list is not an academic list. I don't know of any research study that would agree with me. I did some of this 38 years ago and in my Grade one class I had all the students reading, and having fun without even knowing that they were reading so well. Notice that
teaching to literacy
not being an educator myself, I often wonder whether the system has moved to far from the basics of the 3 R's especially for the 1/3. Is it a case of information overload with the integrated this and integrated that?
Keeping basic education basic
Kristin raises a very interesting question about whethere we have moved too far from the basics. I assume she is referring to the breadth of the curriculum at the primary level and whether literacy is really the primary focus. I recall one particular Principal of a primary school raising that same question with me over a year ago. He felt strongly that if we are serious about literacy development the timetable in primary schools should reflect this. As such, he had started using teh majority of the contact time in his school for literacy education, cutting back on the other content areas until they felt their students were competent to embrace those.What this essentially leads us to is a discussion of what children should be learning when and how loaded should the basic education curriculum really be. Perhaps the educators among us can shed some light on this. Should we keep basic education basic?
Back to basics
Carol, Perhaps you could share with us, the results of that principal's experimentation. This comes back to my other comment about sharing experiences expecially successes and replicating them elsewhere as appropriate
the elusive one-third
Do we know anything about the characteristics of the one-third? Are we applying rules of teaching that are not appropriate for them? We really cannot address the problem if our interventions are not properly targetted based on the problems/issues the 1/3 face.
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