The Truman Show: Analysing Shots

The Truman Show is a Prescribed Text that currently features as an option in Module B: Close Study of a Text for HSC Standard English. 

 

Prior to the the current syllabus options, while reflecting and thinking about ideas, I put together a resource for previous curriculum where the text could be looked at in combination with Reality TV shows. It covers things like representation of ideas, visually constructing meaning, creating a narrative through editing, and examining the relationship between composer and responder. You know, the usual stuff! If you remember the Distinctively Visual elective then you'll know what I'm on about. 

What follows is an assessment / class activity idea. It focuses on the way in which meaning is constructed on the screen as part of a wider unit that could be used to look at Reality TV. I love Reality TV and the way in which it crafts narratives out of footage that is ostensibly meant to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It's so blatantly without grace or scruples that I find it endlessly entertaining in a throw-your-popcorn-at-the-TV kind of way. 

 

We know, of course, that there is nothing remotely real about Reality TV but this is also part of why it's such fertile ground for students to study. I would argue that it's part and parcel of the same need to teach our students today about fake news and the way in which the media manipulates imagery to impose their own narratives. 

 

Anyway, I've digressed enough. 

The attached task involves students taking three screenshots from The Truman Show and writing 250-300 words on each one, describing how the composer has used visual techniques to create meaning, the wider context of the shot and how it fits into an edited sequence, and generally conveying an understanding of how the composer has represented ideas and themes related to the text. 

I've had to remove the outcomes as they were from an older syllabus but I'm sure it could be adapted to the current syllabus easily enough. You'll note also that there is an 'Example of a Full Mark Response' included at the end of the task... this has been taken from My Kitchen Rules (one of the related texts we looked at - the dinner party scenes are great for demonstrating to students how 'frankenbites' are used to impose invented narratives). I was going to delete it before I uploaded it here but I figured there was no harm in including it - it shows some of the things students can talk about it and is useful for modelling what a good response could look like. 

Here's the task - Task Idea.

I also gathered a whole bunch of screenshots together from The Truman Show. Even if you don't care about the task idea, you might at least find these screenshots useful - Truman Show Screenshots. The beauty of screenshots is that they come under free usage in terms of copyright. 

Disclaimer: The above resources have been created or adapted specifically for this blog in my own spare time.

Stage 6 Writing Craft 2: Craft of Writing

This post follows on from last week's overview of writing craft across Stage 6. For that blog, I outlined my approach to Reading to Write for Year 11. Today, I'll share how I approach Craft of Writing for Year 12. 

My approach here is a little less involved than what I do with Reading to Write, and the reason for this is that I prefer a student-led approach. I don't mean student enquiry or anything like that - the idea is just for students to create a portfolio in which they craft their own pieces of imaginative, persuasive, and discursive writing. 

It's also less involved for practical reasons. Reading to Write is mandated as the first module of work for Year 11. By contrast, Craft of Writing usually ends up as the last module undertaken in Year 12. Being last means that the module is subject to all kinds of variables - other modules could have overrun, the teacher may decide that copious amounts of revision is needed for their class in preparation for the Trial HSC... anything could happen, really. So I like to ensure that I only need about 5 weeks for Craft of Writing. This is supplemented by ensuring that a suitable degree of prep work is integrated into Stage 6 leading up to this point.

Anyway, without further preamble, here's what I do.

Craft of Writing

One of the key elements of giving students room to create their own portfolio is in setting them up with a range of supporting material. The previously-outlined approach to Reading to Write is designed to do just this, but another thing that can be done on top of this is ensuring that explicit teaching of writing craft happens on a regular basis throughout all of Year 12. 

Students can chip away at this at the start of every second lesson by engaging in mini-lessons that highlight a literary device or writing technique, with the teacher walking students through short activities in the first 5-10 minutes. Where preferable, these mini-lessons should happen within-context, highlighting writing craft for the Prescribed Texts from the other modules (hence why you may notice a few Nineteen Eighty--Four, Under Milk Wood, The Tempest, and Hag-Seed references throughout my resources - these are my texts from my most recent pattern of study). 

Throughout Year 12: For the mini-lessons, students are given a 'Writology' exercise where they learn about an element of writing craft and then try it out themselves. These are aimed at an Advanced English level. I'll admit there are some obscure ones in here but this unfamiliarity/newness is part of what motivates Advanced students to try them out. It's not expected for students to learn them all by-heart, it's just presented as an ongoing range of tools for them to explore. Said tools are placed in front of students and they pick which ones they like. Some examples:

• Asyndeton
• Parentheses
• Hyperbaton
• Modality
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Iambic Pentameter
• Brachyology
• Shared Lines
• Congery
• Irony
• Symbolism
• Ellipsis
• Anthimeria
• Antithesis
• Stream of Consciousness
• Reported Speech
• Anadiplosis
• Allusion
• Tmesis
• Euphemism
• Motif
• Intertextuality
• Synaesthesia 

Weeks 1-2: This is where the study of the Prescribed Craft of Writing texts begins. I start by introducing the Craft of Writing module, looking at the writing genres, and examining selected prescribed texts.

• Students work through this PowerPoint to explore the different writing genres from the module descriptor. There are certain points throughout where the teacher will need to stop and look at some of the Prescribed Texts from Craft of Writing. The ones I use, as included in this PPT, are 'Eulogy for Gough Whitlam' by Noel Pearson (persuasive), 'Eight Days in a Corset' by Siri Hustvedt (discursive), and 'Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice' by Name Le (imaginative).
• Each time we look at one of the Prescribed Texts, students complete a schema to analyse it - resource here.
• On top of the ones we look at as a class, I also include another three Prescribed Texts for students to read and choose from on their own. I wanted to give my Advanced students a range of options to look at so that there's some level of differentiation at work. The other texts I offer the class are 'How to Marry Your Daughters' by Helen Garner, 'Spotty-Handed Villainesses' by Margaret Atwood, and 'That Crafty Feeling' by Zadie Smith. 
• We also look at some poetry - 'Mastering the Craft' by Vernon Scannell (which came recommended to me courtesy of some ETA professional learning), 'O What is That Sound' by W.H. Auden, and a piece of poetry that I've written myself (I think it's important for English teachers to be vulnerable with their own writing and share with students as part of building a collaborative writing culture). 

This is all a lot more open-ended than how I do Reading to Write. Some other things we might do:

• Examine and annotate a page from one of the Prescribed Texts.
• Have students evaluate one of the Prescribed Texts by writing some guided dot points outlining their ideas on the text's context, a summary of the text, what they see as the text's thematic core (thesis), how effective the text is in using writing craft to get the author's thesis across, and what their final verdict on the piece is and why.
• Getting 'Up-Close' with Noel Pearson's Eulogy for Gough Whitlam - resource here.

The Assessment Task should also be introduced by this point so students can start working on it:

Assessment Portfolio

It's not a complicated assessment task. I didn't want students to get bogged down asking about assessment specifications and getting stuck on passing individual sections of the task before moving on to the next one. The idea is for students to just write! They create three drafts and then turn ONE of these into a polished piece with a reflection. Get them started as soon as possible. 

Weeks 3-5: Students continue analysing the Prescribed Texts and working on their portfolio. Part of the drafting process in any of my classes is for students to show their work to their peers and give/get feedback. Now, this can be a very difficult hurdle to overcome - you have to create a culture of peer feedback, which I mentioned back in the Reading to Write blog. 

Peer assessment is valuable because it: 

1. Helps students articulate their thinking with appropriate metalanguage while giving feedback to their peers (this helps with their reflective writing).
2. Helps break down the kind of competitive culture that can occasionally make high-achieving classes a little toxic. 
3. Helps students learn how to draft their work by using feedback. 

Once a student has picked which of their three pieces they want to revise, they're required to show it to a peer for feedback before I'll give them my teacher feedback. Teacher feedback can be used as a 'carrot' to reward students who have shared with their peers first. Peers use this scaffold to help make the process less confronting.

To break things up, a lesson can also be spent engaging in Socratic discussion. This approach is outlined here. And some questions relevant to Craft of Writing for Socratic discussion can be found here.

I don't mandate the incorporation of material from the Prescribed Texts into the assessable writing pieces but I found that nearly all my students drew inspiration from the pieces anyway due to the recency of examining them, plus they incorporated material they had gathered from the Writology mini-lessons. 

It's a wonderful experience to read reflections where students explicitly referred to what they had learned and explained what inspired the craft and technicality of their own writing processes. It builds confidence for students in regard to their own writing ability, and it's a reassuring process for teachers to be involved in too.

Revision: At the end of it all, students can revise the entire module, using the HSC Seminar below:

• Craft of Writing PPT
• A booklet of material that goes with the above PPT. 

Stage 6 Writing Craft 1: Reading to Write

I'm not teaching Stage 6 English in any form this year. Since I moved schools I've switched over to History for a bit, which has been a nice sea change. This has given me time to pause, take stock, and reflect on my approaches to Preliminary and Advanced English. Today I thought I'd outline my approach to Craft of Writing and Reading to Write.

Since the implementation of the 'new' syllabus in 2019 (maybe I should stop calling it new, it's been nearly 3 years now and I'm sure another syllabus is already being worked on in some form, somewhere) one of the bigger shifts has been the inclusion of Module C: Craft of Writing. This Year 12 module shares strong blood ties with the new Year 11 Common Module Reading to Write. 

Before I lay everything out and demonstrate how I approach Craft of Writing / Reading to Write, there are two sticky elements of the syllabus that I'd like to acknowledge. 

The first of these are the Prescribed Texts.

In all of the Stage 6 English syllabuses, aside from possibly the ATAR option for Studies, there is nothing quite as murky and confusing as the existence of Prescribed Texts for Craft of Writing. For teachers who are new to teaching English, this is what it looks like:

• Teachers are required to cover at least TWO of the texts prescribed within the syllabus for the Craft of Writing. There is a Standard English list, and an Advanced English list.
• When this current iteration of the syllabus was first launched, it wasn't clear exactly how these Prescribed Texts would consistently fit into the HSC examination. To be honest, this still isn't clear after a couple of years.
• Students are required to study these Prescribed Texts in class but there is no mandate for them to be internally assessed. Students may need to call upon knowledge of a Prescribed Text in some form for the HSC examination but this is not guaranteed (the 2019 paper asked students to compare their own piece of writing to a Prescribed Text they studied, but the 2020 paper made no mention of Prescribed Texts at all). 

The other major element is the concept of writing discursive, persuasive, imaginative and informative texts. There are some confusing aspects to the introduction of these genres of writing.

• Students are required to explore and create their own texts using these approaches. It has been indicated, however, that informative texts won't be assessed and this is why no 'informative'-styled texts have been included in the Prescribed Texts list. Considering that a lot of teachers don't get to Craft of Writing until the end of their class's Year 12 year, I would suspect that informative texts just aren't covered as there is little reason to make space for them at the 11th hour before a student's HSC examinations.
• The coverage of imaginative, discursive and persuasive writing seems intended to allow students to play to their own strengths - there is no single sample NESA HSC question or past HSC question that requires students to write in ONE of these specific modes only. The logic therefore follows that a student could potentially not be taught about discursive writing and would still be able to do the HSC examination. That said, I would be loathe to rely upon this implication for the inevitable one time that NESA decides to throw a curveball in a future HSC exam.

Reading to Write

Before tucking into Craft of Writing, it makes sense to prepare students as much as possible by backward mapping into its precursor, Reading to Write.

Considering that Craft of Writing focuses on a few shorter texts rather than a single large one (unless you're brave and you went for Metamorphosis, The Awakening or the massive Colum McCann 'short' story), I decided to approach Reading to Write in a similar fashion by using a collection of shorter texts (a few short stories and some poetry) to model techniques and look at the conscious writing choices made by writers.

After a few weeks of this, students then had to pick from a list of selected texts (drawn from what they've studied in class) and create their own piece of writing in a similar style. 

On a sidenote, I've heard some experienced teachers disparage the Craft of Writing concept of getting 16 year olds to emulate the writing styles of 'great' authors... that it's a near-impossible feat and beyond the practicality of what students are capable of, or what would be in their zone of proximal development. I can only speak for my own context but I found that every single student in my Year 11 Advanced English class either enjoyed the idea of experimenting with different writing styles or was able to engage with the idea in a valuable way - the key is finding accessible texts with a diverse range of clearly defined authorial styles. I think this could work for Standard English too, it's just a matter of finding model texts that suit their ability. 

Below you will find my unit outline, some links to resources or previous blogs that support it, and the assessment task that I use. There will be a couple of gaps where you may need to source copyrighted texts if you want to use my approach.

Weeks 1-2: Okay, so it's Day 1 of Year 11. You might have a range of students in your class who aren't even sure if they want to do Advanced English. Some might be there because they've been told by someone that just by doing the course they're assured to get a better ATAR. It's important at this point to start building the right kind of class culture that encourages a love for reading and writing, constructive student collaboration, and a willingness to try things outside of one's comfort zone. Reading to Write is perfect for this. Things that I like to cover in this introductory period:

• An overview of the Advanced English course, and an overview of Reading to Write in particular.
• Some writing activities where students reflect on their own relationship with reading, why people read, why writers write, etc. 
• An examination of notions of author, authorship and authority - resource can be found here.
• Students look at poem 'Introduction to Poetry' by Billy Collins and use annotation prompts to analyse and reflect on the relationship between reading and writing.
• Students then take a deeper dive into another poem, 'Brooklyn Snow' by Omar Musa (found in his collection Millefiori [2017]) and engage in some writing exercises in response to it. These exercises also offer a good opportunity to introduce some poetry metalanguage, EG. Persona, point of view, etc., in support of further modules throughout both Year 11 and Year 12. 

Weeks 3-4: Continue 'building the field' by looking at what makes good writing and what makes bad writing. At this point students will start to engage with some short texts to explore writing style, narrative voice, etc. 

• Examine the concept of narrative voice. Some students will already be familiar with things like tense and narrative point of view, but I've found it's always best to assume nothing when you have a fresh class of Year 11 students. Work through this PPT on Narrative Voice, and follow up with some guided analysis of two extracts from longer texts (Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey and The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard).
• Read 'Sticks' by George Saunders together as a class. Students then select their three favourite or the three most significant parts of the story and justify why they chose accordingly.
• Look at paratext around 'Sticks' - introducing concept of shorter short stories (flash fiction, microfiction, etc.) to get students comfortable with the length of text they should be writing by the time they do Craft of Writing in HSC. Really short but effective texts are best in this context because, let's face it, students have all of 45 minutes to write an imaginative response during the HSC examination. Resource here.
• Students read examples of flash fiction written by their classmates and complete peer reflection scaffolds - this is designed to continue building the classroom environment as a collaborative writing space, and to get students thinking reflectively. Resource here.
• Read Tim Winton's short story 'Wake' and complete associated activities - resources can be found here.
• Introduce concept of discursive writing with extract from Judith Lucy's memoir The Lucy Family Alphabet - resources can be found here. 
• As this is the beginning of Year 11, it's also useful to introduce the concept of thesis nice and early. Look at what thesis statements are, how a strong thesis can underpin any piece of writing, etc. Typically we might talk about a thesis as being something students need in order to write a strong essay, but a strong thesis is just as useful for any piece of writing - discursive, imaginative, and so on. This PPT outlines what a thesis is, why it's important, and how students can apply this concept to the texts they've already looked at in this unit.

Weeks 5-6: These lessons form the last part of the 'studying / comprehending' section of the unit before the students start to engage with the assessment task. 

• Students read Hemingway's famous short story 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'. Have students record their initial thoughts on the text before engaging with some paratextual information (this can be easily found online with Spark Notes guides and the like). After this additional reading, students then come back to their recorded thoughts and revise their opinion in light of what they've learned - further building their capacity to articulate their thinking in reflective writing forms.
• Students build on their understanding of Hemingway's story by completing associated activities.
• Look at some of Lydia Davis's short fiction, which you can find in The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis (2014). I have to admit, this has probably been the least successful of the all the texts I introduced to my students as part of Reading to Write. I still think it's important to expose students to these sorts of challenging texts nonetheless, though, and Lydia Davis is well-known for her witty, post-modernist flash fiction approach to writing short stories. I use the 1-2 page story 'Our Trip' but, really, you could probably use any of her stories. Get the students to annotate the story by using this schema.
• Spend some time examining the importance of orientations. Discuss the idea that the opening sentences of a text work in orientating the reader in numerous ways, and that the opening sentences of a short story typically work as a purposeful and concerted effort on the part of the author to set up a specific relationship between the reader and the text. Use this range of extracts from Lydia Davis to demonstrate a range of possible orientations, with students using this proforma to analyse the impact of each approach.
• Have students examine some rules for writing from well-known authors. This overview includes 'rules' put forth by Kurt Vonnegut, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Roddy Doyle, and Annie Proulx. Students read through and then come up with their own guide by selecting five rules they will adopt, five rules they will ignore, and three rules of their own.
• If you have time, students could also look at one more model text, '2BR02B' by Kurt Vonnegut, and do some of their own independent analysis by using a combination of approaches taught to them in the prior 5 or so weeks (examining the orientation, annotating the text, using schemas, etc.)

Week 7-8: I like the keep the final two weeks clear so students can work on the assessment task in class. This allows the task to be run as assessment for learning, with lots of discussion around what's working and what isn't as the students write and reflect on their own imaginative pieces. 

• The task itself requires students to draw upon one of the model texts they've looked at in the unit and use it to inspire their own piece of imaginative writing that explores individuality.
• Students also write a reflection on their writing to explain how they drew upon the style of their selected model text.
• The marking criteria demonstrates how major discrete skills and understandings taught throughout the unit of work are linked to the syllabus outcomes. Students can use this marking criteria to guide them, and teachers can use it to indicate what students need to work on.

Assessment Task here.

I really enjoy teaching this assessment task, it's interesting to see which texts each student chooses as their inspiration. Those who like Vonnegut create their own miniature explorations of dystopian ideas, those who engaged with Hemingway try their hand at sparse modernist prose, and some use the days-of-the-week structure of Tim Winton's 'Wake' as a starting point for a piece. So many different approaches!

I'll post the follow-up Craft of Writing module unit soon.

DISCLAIMER: It should go without saying, but all of the above is just my way of approaching the syllabus. It's not the 'right' way to do it, it's just one way to do it.

Literary Homelands Essay Response

I sat the Trial HSC Exam.

I'd seen other English teachers talk about doing this, and I'd done it earlier on in my career with Standard English to 'test' myself for reassurance, so the idea to undertake an Extension English 1 examination wasn't completely foreign to me. I won't lie and say it was a piece of cake; I have to admit that I felt kind of nervous walking into an examination with no notes to rely on and having to write a response legibly enough by hand.

I also feel nervous sharing my responses here on the blog... going into that big cold school hall and having to adhere to those time limits was surprisingly intimidating, but maybe the writing will be useful to someone's students. Hopefully.

Anyway, I wanted to do this for a few very important reasons.

1. There doesn't seem to be a textbook out there filled with Extension English 1 essay responses. I inquired about this with a publisher that I've previously contributed Standard and Advanced essays to and the response was, understandably, that the market was too small. I decided that starting to write my own essays might be the way to go about it.
2. I wanted an essay that was written in as close to student conditions as possible. I sometimes think that the 'Band 6' (or in the case of Extension, Band E4) responses provided by teachers (myself included) are slightly disingenuous as they often aren't written by hand, in timed conditions, or isolated from revision notes.
3. Understanding how the examination works feels like a really important thing that I should know. The only way for me to get a fair summation of this is to do it myself, otherwise I'd forever be an observer looking in.
4. I often feel like I shouldn't ask my students to do anything that I wouldn't do. I want to be able to perform well in exam scenarios... teaching students how to write essays for exams without being able to do it myself has made me feel in the past like I was missing something.
   

I was lucky this year as the examination had been set and finalised several terms ago so I was able to go into the examination without remembering what the questions were. As I said earlier, it was kind of nerve-wracking, and I found myself wandering around mumbling quotes to myself in the preceding days in an effort to memorise some appropriate textual evidence.

The Experience

In the past I've given my Extension students the advice that they should do their Elective essay first, and that they should devote 1 hour to each of the two papers. I tried to follow this advice and I was mostly successful, but here's what I learned:

• I ended up needing at least 70 minutes to write an essay with four properly supported body paragraphs.
  
• The Literary Worlds section, even with its two separate parts, only ended up taking me about 30 minutes. The more organic nature of imaginative writing meant that I wasn't constantly needing to stop and keep track of what I was doing in quite the same way that I needed to for an essay.
• I planned out my essay fairly carefully. This burnt up valuable time but it was entirely necessary to ensure that I didn't stray too far from the question or my thesis. I kept having to stop myself mid-paragraph to go back and check on the question, the thesis, and my plan - this is part of why this section took me so long.
• My planning involved quickly writing down my 12 quotes/textual examples, brainstorming a thesis statement of sorts, and then calling upon four different talking points that our study of Literary Homelands is built around in class. I then matched up each of the textual examples to each of the talking points before I started writing my response.
  
• In writing the Literary Worlds imaginative response I had to be careful to remember I was writing for the purpose of reflecting. To this end, I ensured that I consciously used a couple of techniques that I could discuss in reference to the way we had studied the module in class - this meant crafting a piece of writing that allowed for some implied discussion of reader-response theory, demonstrated how I had both mirrored and subverted the stimulus text, and indicated an understanding of the question that had been posed in the examination.
  
• Side Note: I was conscious of writing something that was of benefit to my current students, so I resisted writing too academically. That is to say, I wrote within the constraints of what I hope my students will be able to write. If I'm being honest and self-critical then I think that my elective essay may be too formulaic and that my imaginative piece could have leaned a bit more on the Joyce stimulus.
  

The best aspect of all of this is that I can now safely say I have a much better appreciation of what Extension students need to keep in mind while doing their exam. In concise terms: it's a lot.

The Exam Questions

The exam used is from the practise responses that can be easily found online at the NESA website. I wanted to try and make sure that the Trial HSC matched the HSC as much as possible, so I've relied on this exam for the first two times I've taught this course.

In light of this, if my students went looking for these practise papers and did them all in advance then they'd have a big advantage going into the trial exam. But, really, I think I'd be so overjoyed that they did this much preparation that I wouldn't mind them having this 'advantage' (I say 'advantage' but really, it's just assessment as learning). Suffice to say, I aim to write a new, original paper next time I teach the course - whenever that may be.

The Responses

Section 1, Part A

She sat outside watching the morning sun embrace her backyard. Eveline had never felt more awake than she did now.

This was a new world of action and desire and excitement and endless opportunities. Her memories of home were fading, in fact - 'home' was starting to disappear altogether. Home? But Australia was now home. That place in the past, Ireland, was something that happened to someone else. Not home.

"Mrs. Jones, when do you expect your husband will be arriving?"

It took a moment for Eveline to register that the butler was talking to her. She turned and caught his raised eyebrow before he re-composed himself.

"Oh, I don't know - he's always traveling. I shan't be surprised if you never get to see him."

The butler sniffed, clearly unimpressed. What did Eveline care? This was the other side of the world. If she wanted to say she was Mrs. Jones, that she had an ersatz husband off fighting wars or exploring jungles, that she was educated and upwardly mobile... If she wanted to say these things then how could this snooty, ridiculous butler challenge her? In Australia, she could be anything.

Yes. The morning sun was radiant as it glinted off the river over yonder, as it reflected off the greenhouse, and breathed life into everything it touched. Eveline? Who was Eveline? She was Sabrina Jones now. She must think of herself as Sabrina, not Eveline.

"Pass me that, would you, James?" she said in her best, most haughty voice.

The butler reluctantly gave it to her and she held it high in the sunlight.

Beautiful.

Let them try and take it away from Sabrina. Just let them try.

Section 1, Part B

In order to invite the reader into my continuation of Joyce's 'Eveline' I took the opening sentence of the writer's original text and mirrored its structure while subverting its intentions. Where Joyce wrote of the character looking out from an interior world through a window, I decided to place her outside to symbolise a difference in place. Where he wrote 'evening', I have used 'morning sun'. This is intended to suggest a new, positive beginning for the character through the use of pathetic fallacy, and Eveline is no longer 'tired' (as described in Joyce's opening lines) but now "had never felt more awake".

To give the impression of this being a more energetic setting and frame of mind for Eveline, I used polysyndeton, "action and desire and excitement and..." The character is clearly open to new possibilities now that she has left Ireland for Australia. A stream-of-consciousness approach is used in the second paragraph with fragmentary and truncated sentences, as well as rhetorical questions, to show the process whereby Eveline constructs a new identity for herself - Sabrina Jones. This acts as a symbol for the embracing of new opportunities.

Needing to generate a potential for conflict, I have made some suggestion that the butler is suspicious by having him ask after her "ersatz husband". The reader is encouraged to engage with further mystery through my choice to have the object at the end remain unnamed. By referring to it obliquely as just 'it' and using an enigmatic, one-word paragraph of "Beautiful" (which could refer to anything - the object, this new situation Eveline is in, the view of the backyard), I hope to unsettle the reader enough to provoke their own reader-response: a deliberate choice with no intended meaning at this point, as I want to convey how reader-response theory can work.

Download Section 1 Response.

Essay Plan

Section 2

Composers use their texts as a platform from which character voices are employed to illustrate the changing world. As a result of processes of modernity such as marginalisation, hybridisation, colonialism, and the instability of language, these characters become representative of the formation of complex identities that result from shifting homelands in the 20th and 21st centuries. The creation of these identities can be observed in texts such as Eileen Chong's suite of poetry, Burning Rice, the play The Secret River by Andrew Bovell, and Ding Xiaoqi's short story, 'The Angry Kettle', each of which provide a forum in which authors can explore the aforementioned ideas.

With the impact of diasporic migration, communities and individuals often find themselves marginalised within Australia's constantly changing society. Eileen Chong explores this idea in her homage to her Chinese ancestry, 'My Hakka Grandmother', with the line "Wild birds in search of a new place to call home" illustrating the lack of power inherent in migrating peoples. The Hakka people are a nomadic group lacking in a fixed homeland, as evidence by the use of the adjective 'wild' in a metaphor designed to evoke images of a group forced to 'fly' from place to place. The connotation of the word 'new' further conveys the idea that the persona's people have lost their previous homeland: they lack the security afforded by a fixed community. This process of disempowerment in similarly expressed in Xiaoqi's short story 'The Angry Kettle', wherein the Chinese protagonist faced with a symbol of white Australian dominance, the titular kettle, remarks that she "barely had the guts to look straight at it". This allusion to the kettle's power lends the object a sense of personification as if it were an intimidating force to be reckoned with - an item that symbolises historical English superiority in Australian society. The process of marginalisation that results from unequal relationships of power is further explored in Bovell's adaptation of 'The Secret River', in which the play's events reach an appalling climax whereby the increasingly dominant white settlers massacre the Dharug people while singing a song of home, 'London Bridge'. The contrast between the tragedy that befalls the Dharug and the image of grown men singing a song so well-known to children provides a tonal dissonance that illustrates the way British power has disrupted the natural balance of the Dharug people - a process of violence that pushes them to the margins of their own world, so to speak.

The ability of migrant identities to find a foothold in their new homeland may also inevitability lead to a process in which new, hybrid identities are formed. Against their best wishes, the people of the Dharug in 'The Secret River' find themselves subjected to the influence of their European invaders. This is perhaps best exemplified by the ex-convict Thornhill giving Ngalamalum the anglicised name of 'Jack'. Despite the insistence of his son Willy that the Dharug man's name is easy to pronounce with practice, Thornhill's self-assurance in his own culture results in his own choice of name being imposed on Ngalamalum, a metonym for the process of re-naming that has seen Aboriginal culture develop accordingly in times since. This process is explored in other ways by Chinese-Australian migrants too, with Chong's poem 'Chinese Ginseng' labelling the taste of the eponymous Chinese medicinal herb as 'bitter-sweet' - a paradoxical description that showcases her mixed emotions about the traditions of her mother and illustrates the complex ambiguity of being Chinese in the Western world. Conversely, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' resists the attempt of her housemate Michael to subsume her traditional identity completely. When Michael racistly asks her if Chinese people have to eat 'fried food' she hyperbolically retorts with a question of whether all Australians have to "treat their kettles like sweethearts," a simile that subverts his discriminatory question by turning it back on him. In considering each of these texts it becomes clear that the ongoing development of cultural identities is something that happens in connection to opposing identities that exist in the same space.

The creation of shared spaces is, in the case of Australia, a result of the 18th and 19th century practice of colonialism. In 'The Secret River', the settler Thornhill makes the claim that "dug-over dirt" is as "good as planting a flag." This simile references a belief that the British way of using land is the only true proof of ownership, and is used by Thornhill to discount the validity of Dharug pre-existence along the Hawkesbury River. This event is representative of larger historical events that impacted on Australia's Indigenous peoples and would have an ongoing ramification on their concept of identity in years to come. The violent impact of colonialism is also felt in more subtle ways, with Chong's persona in 'Burning Rice' sadly looking at her burnt rice and metaphorically describing it as "my ancestors' ashes in a bowl", an observation that illustrates the loss of connection to her previous homeland that has result from living in a nation still characterised by British cultural dominance. This dominance is also evident in 'The Angry Kettle', with the ever-present kitchen implement signifying the living spectre of British colonialism that still sits, 'shiny' and important, in the average Australian home. The narrator of this short story demonstrates this through the juxtaposition cause by her dirty 'fingerprint' on the gleaming kettle - an act that symbolises the intrusion of Asian identity into the homogenously white world that had grown from British colonisation of Australia. Each of these texts convey how composers use the voices and presence of these characters to explore the way identities change through experience.

The instability of language is another key component of literary texts that embody changing cultural identity. In Chong's poem, 'Winter Meeting', the persona describes a meeting with an older Chinese poet in Melbourne. As a suggested for her depression, Kim Booey Cheng tells the persona to read the famous traditional Chinese poets. She is, however, unable to, reflecting, "But where you go / I cannot follow... I lost the language years ago." This metaphor reveals the way in which a Chinese-Australian's changing command of Chinese language can affect one's sense of cultural connection. In contrast, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' is unable to grasp the finer nuances of Australian English, describing her housemates words as "pouring out", a verb choice that carries a connotation of natural force, of hot water from a kettle, of something that cannot be stopped so that understanding can be checked. It is at this point in the story that the reader first gets a sense that a division is appearing between the protagonist and her housemate, and it is a division created by a difference of language. The power of language is utilised in a different way by Andrew Bovell in 'The Secret River'. The Aboriginal characters speak in the Dharug dialect, which is used to allow the audience to experience the cultural barriers between the British and the Indigenous. At various points in the text there are moments of misunderstanding that result from Thornhill's ignorance of the language, and his unwillingness to learn it foreshadows that it is a language doomed to extinction.

Through examining 'The Angry Kettle', 'Burning Rice' and 'The Secret River', readers can get a sense of how cultural identity is fluidic, flexible process that happens in interaction the development of new 'homeland' spaces. Through a process of self experience, characters shift and resist and hybridise in the modern world, and authors present their voices so this can be better illustrated.

Download Section 2 Response.

New Assessment Approaches in Stage 6 English

The 2019 ETA Conference emphasis the progression of 'Passion to Practice', which covers a range of conceptual pedagogies for their implementation in the English classroom.This particular session was borne of consideration pertaining to Outcome 9 in the NSW Senior English syllabus and the new HSC specifications rolled out by NESA in the past 18 months.

Extract: With the arrival of the new HSC specifications for Stage 6, the time has never been better for examining new approaches to essay writing that take students away from the stress and anxiety of formal exam settings. In this presentation we will cover how peer editing, conferencing, annotation, and Assessment as Learning can be used to build both confidence and valuable writing skills in senior English students. Teachers will also be given access to a variety of materials that can be adapted to their own classrooms and a number of Year 11 and 12 modules. 

Here is the presentation, which covers multimodal assessment, peer editing, conferencing, lexical density testing, feedback (or analytical) criteria, and dynamic assessment.

• New Assessment Approaches

(I'll add here, as it's as good a place as any, that none of this is really 'new' - it's just new in the sense that these approaches provide alternatives to commonplace formalised assessment strategies that require stripping back in light of the new HSC specifications).

Here are the resources that go with the presentation:

• Resources

Thanks!

Dracula Term 2: Texts, Culture and Value

At the start of the year I consolidated the first term's lessons for a revised unit of work focused on Dracula for the Year 11 Extension English 1 module Texts, Culture and Value. This first term focuses on Dracula itself, an introduction to important contextual information for study, and interacting with academic paratext to build a level of understanding suitable to an Extension English context (and hopefully prepare students for university-level study!).

In continuation of this, the second term of the module addresses a modern text (The Lost Boys) and introduces material that supports students in their undertaking of the Related Project. Without further waffle, here's the resources for the term in a single document for easy access:

• Dracula Term 2: Texts, Culture and Value

And here's the associated PowerPoint, some of which was adapted from ideas shared by Eva Mayes in mETAphor Issue 2, 2012, in the article 'The Language of Comparison' (hence why the PPT is mislabelled - a fair bit of it has been changed from the original DoE document that was initially shared with me):

• 9-1. Utilising Sophisticated Language PPT

And the two video clips referenced in the program:

As stated in the previous blog, the main document is designed to be printed as a booklet and given to each student. There's a section in the front of the booklet that explains how each of the resources work. It's more for the teacher but it doesn't hurt for the students to see it and track their progress. The document also includes a formal assessment task (the Related Project) and an informal assessment task (a proposal for the Related Project presented in viva voce form). You can teach the whole unit as it is, or pull it apart and use bits and pieces, rewrite stuff from it, etc.  

A reiteration of the caveats I mentioned last time too:

• The module has been designed from a place of non-assumption; that is to say, everything is laid out for the students as if they are coming to everything in this for the first time because, well, they probably are. Some material has also been included to build skills that should assist students in their HSC year (without touching any of the HSC content, of course).
• One of the larger parts of the booklet is the Study Guide to The Lost Boys (Resource 3-1). I've posted an earlier version of this document on this blog before but the version in the updated module now includes student questions in the analysis column. I don't expect students to answer every question but, as a form of differentiation, students should aim to answer at least one question per page. 
• The readings included are mostly extracts sourced from online. Sources have been included on all of these except for one. The one with no author attributed to it was written by myself, adapted from a review I wrote in a previous life as a film reviewer. I've included each of the readings here because, as you'll probably already know, things on the internet have a tendency to disappear sometimes! Incidentally, if you're reading this and happen to be the author of one of these online pieces and would like it removed from this not-for-profit educational document then please just let me know and I'll take it out.

If you have any questions please fee free to contact me by commenting below, or using the email address in the booklet.

Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

With the advent of NESA's stipulations for HSC Assessment, in which students may only sit one formal examination per subject (including essays set in this fashion), there is now an increased need to senior students to practise the writing of extended responses in a meaningful fashion. Prior to the new rules, students might have written essays in assessable conditions anywhere up to 3 or 4 times across their final schooling year, but now this is no longer possible.

One way to get around this is to incorporate drafting into an assessable essay. This takes away the formalised examination context and - in the spirit of what NESA is hoping for - allows for a less stressful approach to essay writing in which students can engage with assessment as learning. 

There are two examples here for different subject areas, both of which were written for the older syllabus that ended this year. Regardless of your KLA, it's worth checking out both of them as they represent different approaches to the drafting process.

• Advanced English Example

• Modern History Example

Both tasks utilise an analytical marking criteria (as opposed to the holistic style rubrics used for HSC marking). It's a different way to mark than what we may be used to, however, it's imperative to use an analytical-styled criteria when undertaking assessment as learning as it allows the students to identify specific skills they can work on to consolidate strengths and address weaknesses. 

The holistic marking grid (in which student ability is represented in bands of grouped criteria) is specifically designed as the absolute end point of the learning process, IE. This style of criteria gets used for HSC marking because the students don't get to see how they're marked at this point. An analytical marking grid (in which specific skills are addressed with their own independent marks) is designed to offer meaningful feedback to the student, and this is often what a lot of Australian universities use for their humanities courses when demonstrating to students what criteria they need to address when submitting assignments.

Anyway! In terms of the resources attached above:

The Advanced English task requires students to submit a draft at some point before the final submission date. In terms of making their drafting visible to the marker, 5 of the 25 marks have been allocated to a reflection statement that they must attach to their final submission. 

The Modern History task strips back the differentiation of skills (it's only a 15 mark response) in order to take the pressure off students who are being asked to do multiple drafts. The drafting process is incorporated here as a non-mandatory due date, which works as thus:

• Students submit a draft about one week before the final due date. Students can't be penalised if they don't submit at this time - it isn't mandatory and it isn't the final due date.
• The teacher marks the drafts and gives them back to the students with feedback.
• Students have an option to re-submit on the final due date for re-marking. If they choose not to do this then they take the mark they've already been given instead.

Roughly half the students in this scenario re-submit a new draft for marking. The other half aren't interested in "doing the assessment task twice" and will take the mark they've been initially given. It turns out to be a remarkably efficient approach as you get to finalise marks for half the students before the final due date.  

I'll write another blog down the track once I've had a chance to develop more assessments in response to the new syllabus.

English Studies: Your Friend and Mine

English Studies is crafty and... okay, look, here's a picture of a fox!

Today I presented some material on the English Studies course and how it fits in with the new syllabus. Like all good courses, English Studies is a subject that continues to evolve under the scrutiny of teacher interpretation and re-interpretation, and the arrival of the new syllabus has seen it undergo some consolidation. The PPT attached below gives an overview of what the course is, what each module looks like, and how we can use the course to empower students who don't have a history of success in the discipline of English.

English Studies: Your Friend and Mine - PowerPoint Presentation.

Here is some other material on English Studies that might be of interest:

• Fully Resourced English Studies Units - developed by the Department of Education as part of its mEsh initiative. I worked with a colleague, Ebony Toth, to create resources and a program for two of the modules.
• English Studies: What It Was, and Where It's Going - some notes from the 2016 English Studies Day organised by enthusiastic Studies advocate Sam Schroder. 
• English Studies: Authentic Assessment as Learning - an earlier version of one of the mEsh units. Might be worth a look as it goes into detail on the implementation of the project-based learning section of the module. 

Happy Term 3 :)

Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment

UNSW, where Ignite the Spark 2018 took place

About a week ago I attended the Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference. This Professional Learning was mainly focused on assessment in relation to giftedness but what was most interesting across the conference was that, underneath a rhetoric built around excitement for assessment and the need for teacher quality, the real subtext of most of the sessions seemed to be that the HSC Exams have become obsolete and that the requirements handed down from NESA and the DoE aren't represented by this increasingly irrelevant process.

But, like it or not, the HSC exams remain largely unchanged and this means that Stage 6 has become an increasingly challenging transition phase between all the requirements of 21st century learning covered by Years K-10 and the need to perform well in a 19th century-styled examination at the end of Year 12. 

Enter Lisa O'Neill, the Head Teacher of HSIE at St Mary's Senior High, who presented a brilliant seminar at Ignite the Spark that centred on how we can better meet the challenges set forth by the demands of the HSC in 2018 and beyond by differentiating our assessment of Year 11 and 12. In her presentation Lisa identified our tendency as teachers to focus on preparing students for exams, and the way that our assessment tasks lead towards the HSC exams, and questioned the capacity of these assessments in actually helping these students to learn. We can't eradicate the exam but there is a concerted need to shift our thinking so that students become more skill-focused. NESA seems to be acknowledging this through the mandating of only 1 formalised examination per subject, per year. There is an undeniable tension, though, between the push for assessment in Stage 6 to become less focused on preparing for the HSC exams and the HSC exam-focused culture that already exists in NSW schools.

Here are some things we need to consider:

• NESA syllabuses include a requirement that each KLA assesses their students using assessment as, of, and for learning. I've tended to interpret this as meaning that not all assessment tasks should be based on establishing data that assesses student ability (assessment of learning).
• About 60% of domestic university student enrollments from 2014-2017 were non-ATAR, which suggests that universities are becoming less concerned with the HSC examination when it comes to evaluating who they admit into their courses.

Getting back to Lisa O'Neill's Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment presentation, she takes her lead from John Hattie in approaching differentiation as something that "relates more to addressing students' different phases of learning from novice to capable to proficient rather than merely providing different activities to different (groups of) students" (from Hattie's Visible Learning for Teaching). O'Neill also piqued my interest by using this to interpret the as, of and for dichotomy of assessment in a more holistic sense - that each individual assessment task should encapsulate all three of these forms of assessment. 

I think I'm down with that. 

Linking her work to the Professional Standards, O'Neill highlighted Standard 1, IE. 'Know Your Students', and clarified her interpretation of differentiation as having one broad task that allows access points for all students. In a nutshell, assessment:

• Should provide students with multiple ways to achieve.
• Can provide access points for students moving through a spectrum of novice to capable to proficient.

O'Neill presents on the Assessment Cycle of Love

 Here are some other recommendations made by O'Neill:

1. Use what she refers to as the 'Assessment Cycle of Love', a diagrammatic tool for designing assessment, to identify gaps in your tasks. Are the outcomes, marking criteria, feedback, and process of assessment all as per NESA advice? Are assessment as, of and for learning all functional within the task?
2. Staff evaluation should be an integral part of the process, with consideration of whether a task has allowed students to set learning goals, and what skills students were taught while undertaking the task.  
3. Know the data - use SMART, SCOUT, our own assessment tasks, and the Educator Calculator (a data tool for assessment that can be found at the DoE Centre for Education on Statistics and Evaluation).
4. Consider the need for access points in tasks so students don't become disheartened when an assessment task has shown them that they can't do anything in preparation for the HSC exams. They might be able to access a band in the marking criteria, but can they access a skill set?
5. Include feedback in the marking criteria. Feedback is pivotal for Stage 6 assessment and all criteria should be a form of assessment for learning (IE. What can teachers and students alike gain from reading this criteria in preparing for future learning?)
6. Can we shift the student mindset away from marks and towards skills? Have students make an appointment for feedback conferencing and use this time for students to annotate their own response. Identity their areas of weaknesses ahead of time and get them to look for these weaknesses in the task so that they can establish learning goals.

Some Useful Links

"Crunching the Numbers" - A report from the Mitchell Institute on the use and usefulness of the ATAR.
Student Conferencing and Feedback  - providing students with 1:1 feedback to facilitate personal growth.
Assessment For Learning - an alternative approach in using separate diagnostic assessment with students.

Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference: Ways of Assessing Giftedness

On Friday I attended the Ignite the Spark Conference at UNSW in the hope of learning some new stuff about assessment. Associate Professor David Blaazer, the Deputy Dean for UNSW Arts and Social Sciences, opened up the conference after a reflective Welcome to Country delivered by a representative of the Dharawal people, and this led into an address from DoE Director of Secondary Education Lila Mularczyk, who spoke enthusiastically about the conference's role in highlighting the need to tie our assessment practice to current policy. 

Assessment is a funny beast though.

All teachers do it so it's not KLA specific, and the need for Professional Development around assessment can sometimes get relegated elsewhere due to its non-denominational nature. With this in mind, it's always interesting to see who shows up to these kinds of conferences. Suffice too say - there were a lot of teachers here and the presenters represented many different sectors of the education system - from primary to secondary, private to public, and including counsellors, psychologists, NESA representatives, DoE corporate, and other agencies who help care for our kids.  

The keynote address (which this blog focuses on) was delivered by Dr. Jae Yup Jared Jung, and focused on his research relating to assessment in gifted education, which represented a systematic review he has published in the Journal of Advanced Academics (28, 163-203). NESA considers 'differentiation' to include adjusting and modifying assessment activities in order to cater for both individual students and larger groups, and the idea of assessing students to locate giftedness is accordingly mandated. It should be noted, however, that there is no real standardisation for catering to the gifted in NSW and this is why Dr Jung's research is so incredibly relevant.

Dr. Jung demonstrates what a non-verbal ability test looks like.

The Research

In his search of research literature from 2005 to 2016, Dr. Jung essayed each of the major academic databases and the reference lists of retrieved articles found in the top research journals. By doing this, he found the following:

• 148 articles in total that dealt with the topic of assessment in gifted education.
• A clear majority within this of 128 articles that deal with identification of gifted students.
• Only 14 articles that covered evaluations of gifted programs.
• And just 8 articles that deal with learning growth. 

The majority of the presentation went on to cover the ways that gifted students are identified (since this is where the majority of research focuses). Dr Jung identifies two major categories of common assessment: Objective (or Traditional) assessments, which are quantitative and result in a number used to identify ability, and Subjective (or Non-Traditional), which involve qualitative judgements made by teachers, psychologists, counsellors, parents, etc. 

Objective Assessments

1. IQ Tests

These involve problem solving, utilising logic, and demonstrating recognition of patterns or relationships. Examples of this kind of testing includes the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), the Stanford Binet 5 test, the Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test, the Cognitive Abilities Test (CoGAT), the Australian Council for Educational Research General Abilities Test (AGAT), Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), and the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test II (NNAT-II).   

Benefits: The WISC-V is designed to measure five different areas (verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, visual spatial ability, working memory, and processing speed) and therefore allows for the recording of strengths and weaknesses in said areas. The Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test is an abbreviated IQ test that can be given by teachers rather than psychologists, and the CoGAT and AGAT can be administered in groups rather than individually (which is practical for schools). The Raven's and Naglieri methods are nonverbal ability tests that assess students through the use of visual-spatial stimuli and can be useful because they reduce the reliance on a student's prior educational history or ability to speak English as a first language (or at all).

Concerns: The WISC-V and Stanford Binet 5 tests must be administered by appropriate accredited professionals (psychologists) and are designed for 1:1 testing. These can therefore be quite expensive; $1000-2000 per individual student.

Quote: "Aw, c'mon! Tell me which Poplar Tree is the tallest!!!" The Window Effect refers to the idea that if we assess whether students can achieve to a certain point then we can't see what they could do beyond this point.

2. Above Level Tests

Achievement tests designed for older students in higher grades, with 'higher ceilings' (see cartoon above). These tests are difficult for the majority of testees to 'top out', and assist in the search for talented individuals whose abilities may go beyond the scope of most assessment tasks. Examples include American-style examinations such as the SATs, ACTs, and EXPLORE tests. 

Benefits: Allows for the identification of outliers: the small percentage of people whose ability does not fit on the regular scale of assessment. This style of testing is also designed for specific age groups, so it allows for more targeted assessing of students.

Concerns: Results can be disheartening for the majority of students who undertake the test, so this data usually needs to be kept confidential and for teacher purposes only.

3. Computer Adaptive Tests

Online testing instruments that adapt questions to suit student ability, and scale each question based on prior performance in the same test so that the student is constantly working within their zone of proximal development. Abbreviated as 'CATs'.

Benefits: Can be a very efficient way to gather data as the computer generates reports automatically. It also differentiates the test for each individual student, which means no two tests are the same.

Concerns: CATs can be calibrated too closely to a 'pass-fail' dichotomy that doesn't allow for a diverse data set. These tests can also only measure as far as the student goes - when a student or the test finishes we may still not know what the student is truly capable of.

Subjective Assessments

1. Nominations

Having 'gifted' students nominated for recognition allows for us to consider the unique perspectives of various groups familiar with gifted students. One such group are parents, who are a subjective source of information but can also provide lots of information that we don't or can't have access to otherwise, such as milestones like the moment the child first spoke or formed a sentence.

Benefits: Nominations allow for assessment of different types of giftedness, and can also be a useful way of incorporating the input of a student's individual teachers (therefore making them part of the consultative process, which is useful and supportive in the formation of any kind of school-based gifted program).

Concerns: This process relies on human judgement and therefore lacks the psychometric rigour of I.Q. testing and similar methodologies.

2. Performance-Based Assessment

These are assessments that look more like subject-specific assessment tasks. This style of assessment could be: asking students to act in a prescribed way to create a product or a response, such as a written composition, or a teacher observing students in problem-based learning activities.

Benefits: The familiarity of this kind of testing will appeal to teachers already used to gathering data in this way. This method is also fairly open-ended and can elicit a wide range of results.

Concerns: There may be a lack of clarity in how it should be scored as each teacher will mark to the criteria in their own particular way. It can also be more time-consuming than objective methods of assessment as each individual student requires an individualised evaluation of their work.

3. Dynamic Assessment

Of all the things Dr. Jung spoke about in his keynote, I found his discussion of Dynamic Assessment the most interesting. I probably found this the most interesting thing about the whole conference and I can see myself looking forward into it in the immediate future.

Dynamic Assessment is a process that involves interaction between the teacher and the student, with a focus on how the student responds to educational interventions. It's not about the student's response to the task but about measuring how a student improves or reacts to a task. There are two main kinds: 

• The first is the 'Sandwich Format', in which a student is pretested, given an intervention, and then post-tested. In the post-test the level of improvement in the student is measured in comparison tot he pretest. 
• The second kind is the 'Cake Format', in which a student is given a task with a series of items and assistance is provided only when the student encounters difficulties. The amount of instances, or types of intervention, are then measured to show how much growth the student exhibited, or how much/little help they needed in independently adapting to the demands of the task.

Benefits: This process deliberately acknowledges the inequality of educational opportunity among students - as each student comes to us with their own unique context this means that their giftedness may have been either nurtured in the past or completely ignored. The result is that there isn't an even playing field when it comes to trying to 'see' the natural level of giftedness in a student. Using Dynamic Assessment minimises the role of performance in previous assessment tasks as this form of assessment focuses on observing the student's capacity in adapting to difficulty.

Concerns: A high degree of standardisation is needed when training teachers to administer this process of assessment. As such it can be time-consuming, resource and staff-intensive, and involves a lot of effort.

Dr. Jung

Further Observations of Dr. Jung

1. Multiple Criteria Identification

With so many different methods of assessment available to identify gifted students the consensus seems to be that multiple criteria should be used together. This allows for the minimisation of bias and multiple opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to demonstrate giftedness. So, with this in mind, Dr. Jung asserts that we should use both objective and subjective methods. Some other things to take into account:

• We need to ensure that we're using instruments appropriate to our context - this means look at current student numbers, demographics of the region, etc.
• Identification needs to take place as early as possible and there should also be training provided for the teachers identifying the students.
• If using multiple criteria, the data should be collected and analysed concurrently so no students get left behind.

2. Disadvantaged Groups in Gifted Programs

Dr. Jung also expressed several concerns in relation to the under-representation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. He posited that this happens due to several factors:

• Inappropriate/unfamiliar content in assessment tasks.
• Pre-defined conceptions of giftedness could be inherent in assessment tasks.
• Pre-conceptions of teachers could lead to unconscious bias.
• Socio-economic factors.
• Lack of a mechanism for universal assessment of gifted students in NSW.

This last point is a big issue with giftedness in general. Not all schools test for giftedness and the ones that do may do so in very different ways, with specific ideas of what giftedness means. Many schools have 'self-select', 'opportunity', or 'academic-focus' classes but the criteria used to create these classes often have little to do with natural giftedness and more to do with prior performance.

Nevertheless, as we move forward into the 21st century, I have strong hopes that NSW will inch its way closer to some kind of standardised mandate to identify and better support those who may be hiding in plain sight.

Dr. Jung's research can be found here, but you will need access to academic journals in order to read it in full.