Podcast and Blog
Australian curriculum
S4 Ep14 - Guidance for Evaluating Impact
Hello, hello, it's Jocelyn here with the final episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast for 2024, recorded right here on the lands of the Palawa people of Tasmania. I'm so pleased that you've been able to find time to join me amongst what I know is a hugely busy end of year schedule. Oh my, what a year it's been.
So much has happened and I know that many schools have felt the effects of the whirlwind of 2024.
Even as you celebrate positive changes that your…
S4 Ep13 - Let's Talk Year 3-6 Reading Assessment and Grading
Hi there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast recoded here in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people. I’m Jocelyn and I want to say a huge hello to all teachers and leaders grappling with assessment and reporting. Last episode of the podcast, I shared a perspective on reporting and grading early years reading without a benchmark assessment. In the old days, we assessed students, looked at the level and then used that to determine what A-E grade students r…
S4 Ep12 - The Secret to Grading Early Years Reading
Hi there, I'm Jocelyn and I'd like to welcome you to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast, recorded here on the lands of the Palawa people of Tasmania.
Here in Australia, it is Term 4 and the end of the school year is just a few weeks away. That means that teachers and leaders will be turning their attention to assessment and grading in preparation for report writing. So in this episode, I’d like to share some thoughts and suggestions on grading early …
Version 9 of the English Curriculum Has Landed
The new Australian Curriculum is out and there is some exciting news. The words ‘predictable texts’ and ‘combining contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge’ are now gone. Other worrisome phrases such as ‘visual memory’ have disappeared from the year 1 descriptors that relate to reading and writing high-frequency words. These changes reflect the growing understanding of how we learn to read and are to be celebrated. No longer will we have to try and counter arguments in favour o…
Key Questions for Grading Early Years Reading
One of the ‘hot topics’ right now is how to grade reading when we are moving towards a more evidence informed method of assessment. In a previous post, I wrote about how you might conduct that assessment (here) but the next natural question is, “How does this align with the Australian Curriculum from which we have to grade?”
I warn you, this post is a monster, but I wanted you to have some solid, simple information from which you could make a judgement about reading grades.
The first thing t…