Bass High School
Key features
Developing greater understanding of geographical concepts through improved writing skills
School context
Bass High School has an enrolment of 770 students. It has a significant number of students from LBOTE, mainly from Muslim and Macedonian backgrounds. Many of the LBOTE students have high literacy needs and require ESL support.
Planning
The project was the result of collaborative planning between the Head Teacher of the HSIE faculty, Peter Kennedy, and two teachers from the HSIE faculty, Rhonda Kaidbay and Amal Dib.
Both Rhonda and Amal have undertaken professional learning on ESL in the Mainstream.
Objectives
The development of a Stage 4 Geography unit of work which had:
- an assessment task linked to HSIE syllabus outcomes and with explicit quality criteria
- literacy outcomes linked to HSIE syllabus outcomes.
Targets
The target group was Year 7 Geography students.
The benchmark data were the 2005 ELLA results. Analysis of the ELLA data identified the need for improvement in students’ writing skills. The targets were:
- improve students’ skills in writing of introductions, conclusions and persuasive language, writing for a specific purpose and audience, the use of connectives, articles, plurals and noun groups, and spelling of geographical terminology
- increase the level of student engagement in Year 7 Geography lessons.
Strategies
Professional learning of the Geography faculty on the NSW Quality Teaching framework leading to the planning of a unit of work on Wetlands by:
- determining the concepts to be taught and the outcomes to be achiev
- developing an assessment task to address the concepts and outcomes
- backward mapping to develop quality classroom activities to address assessment task
(e.g. field trip to Homebush Bay wetlands environment).
Resources used
PSP Consultant
ESL/Multicultural consultant
Literacy 7-12 consultant.
Quantitative outcomes
The Year 8 ELLA results were analysed to determine the improvement in students’ literacy skills.
Qualitative outcomes
- high quality of the student work samples as a result of the assessment task
- increased student engagement
- decreased N awards for Year 7 students
- increased understanding of teachers of the literacy demands of the Geography syllabus
- increased understanding of teachers of the NSW Quality Teaching framework leading to improved classroom teaching.
Future directions
- extend the process to the writing of units for all Stage 4 and Stage 5 Geography students
- professional dialogue with Head Teachers from other faculties to discuss the implementation of a literacy focus across all Stage 4 KLAs.
Implications
- expose students to a variety of learning activities to increase their engagement
- focus on the explicit teaching of literacy skills in faculties other than English
- consider the strategy of backward mapping as a way to explicitly address outcomes and concepts
- develop explicit quality criteria for assessment tasks
- use the NSW Quality Teaching framework to develop quality assessment tasks and classroom teaching activities.
Further information
Therese Weir
Coordinator PSP, Equity Literacy Initiatives
(02) 9244 5258
