One of the concerns raised in having a nationally standardised test is that it can create anxiety for young people who struggle with literacy.  The problem, however, is that many children slip through the cracks and their difficulties with spelling are not picked up and assisted. NAPLAN can, in fact, identify students who struggle with spelling and hopefully lead schools to develop programs and activities to assist learning.

Isn’t that a good thing?

For the teenagers we work with for whom spelling is somewhat of a challenge – these pointers developed by Philomena Ott are very helpful.

COPS

C       Capitals

Check you have capitalised the first letter of a sentence and all proper nouns.

O      Omission

Read through your work and check you haven’t forgotten a word. Add the correct word.

P      Punctuation

Check you have added a full stop at the end of a sentence and that you have inserted quotation marks.

S       Spelling

Check your spelling.

 

Some common features of dyslexic writers

1. Omission: Omit a single letter

occuring for occurring

2. Insertion: Insert a single letter

off for of

3. Substitution: Replace a single letter with another single letter

definate for definite

4. Transposition: Misorder two adjacent letters

lable for label

A single letter is misplaced by more than one position in a word

litgh for light

5. Grapheme substitution: A plausible but incorrect choice of
grapheme

their for there

thort for thought

5. Wrong use of a split vowel digraph

gole for goal

If you know a young person who makes these kinds of choices – he or she can be helped.

Please see: Information from ACARA on the adjustments available to young people with disabilities.

 

Information from ACARA on the adjustments available to young people with disabilities.

Support NAPLAN

Information from the Victorian Education Department on dyslexia

Learning Difficulties and Dyslexia

Information from the Yale Centre for Creativity and Dyslexia

Yale Centre for Creativity and Dyslexia

Well – for someone that really likes everyone to just get on – wading into the NAPLAN debate can be quite scary. Clearly, I don’t want any child to be anxious about sitting a test and I don’t want teachers to feel that they have to only teach grammar and sentence structure in English lessons so their students pass NAPLAN.

However, we do seem to have something of a national problem. Mastering writing continues to be a challenge around Australia. I looked at the statistics myself today on ACARA’s website and they made interesting (and depressing) reading.

The year nine results across the country reveal that more or less only 40% of students met the Band 8 standard or above for writing. In the Northern Territory – it was 20%. This year – young people around Australia had to write a persuasive text of around about 500 words on the topic ‘Don’t waste it!’ and the visual prompts included water, food and time.

Now of course, writing is a difficult to master. It will take some children far longer than others. Children with learning difficulties may find it too big a mountain to climb by year 9. And yes, some young people resist, fall asleep in the test, don’t try and so on – so the figures may not be accurate. I realise school is for learning and it is a journey. A long journey. A lifelong journey.

But. We’ve got to try haven’t we? We’ve got to aim high, haven’t we?

Only 40% of students managed to score over and above 32 marks out of a possible 48 marks writing about whether or not time is precious or food should not be wasted.

Isn’t this something we should be concerned about?

So the universities have responded…

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/unis-will-accept-students-who-do-not-meet-new-hsc-literacy-and-numeracy-standard-20170407-gvfxd5.html