The classroom environment
Lesson organisation
Working with literature and other texts
Evaluation of programs
Working collaboratively to develop ideas and resources
Student and teacher resources, including picture books

The classroom environment

I’m the only person who teaches in this room, so the way that it's organised makes a statement about the things that are important to me. It's fairly bright and lively. It’s been repainted blue and carpeted, and that’s made a big difference to the feel of the place. I think it’s important for classrooms to be really visual, because our kids live in a world that emphasises visual text, and so I think that there ought to be lots of visual stimuli around the room. There are lots of posters around the room, which have been acquired, usually for nothing. At the moment I’ve got lots of poetry on the walls, and that’s been instrumental in getting some kids to read. I’ve put poems on display in the corridor outside my classroom as well.

As prompts or reminders for students, we have lots of posters about language conventions such as the use of capital letters, punctuation and so on. I've also displayed a range of quotations that I hope will encourage students to reflect on their lives and their approach to their studies. As well, I believe in the importance of using displays of students' work. In my classroom I also have sets of dictionaries, sets of short story books, as well as some of my own novels and poetry books that students can choose to read. It’s also really important to have a TV and video in here most of the time because I try to incorporate a range of text types in my English program. For more information about classroom environment, see classroom culture in Elements of an English classroom.

Lesson organisation

Within my classroom I try to vary my teaching approaches but not my routine. My teaching style can vary from the dramatic to the didactic. Students are encouraged to employ both individual and cooperative learning styles. One thing which I have found to be really important, though, is that I must set realistic, yet challenging, goals both for the students and for myself.

I believe that a knowledge of Standard Australian English is vital, and so I focus on the use of the appropriate language for a range of situations. This is learned and reinforced all the time.

Lessons are planned as manageable sequences of smaller units. We start with a teacher focus and then move into student activities. At Claremont, the use of a multi-layered curriculum is really important so that I can cater for the range of ability levels within the heterogenous classes. I also use negotiated contracts and thematic approaches.

The routines within our classroom aim to build on students’ prior knowledge, to revise their skills, and to allow them to practise their skills. I believe that this is important if they are to achieve something. If students are successful, it improves their self esteem, which tends to lead to higher levels of achievement. So, revising and reinforcing is really important. I also rehearse and monitor their routines all the time within the classroom. The students know that we always start with the same sorts of activities and that those activities will be outlined on the whiteboard at the front of the room. The lesson's structure is always explicit, because the students in my classes prefer a regularly structured routine.

Working with literature and other texts

I like to base my teaching program around a theme, so that we can study a range of text types such as film, poetry, novels, short stories and so on. I think that that’s a really good springboard for student learning as well.

With my Year 10s this year I’ve done lots of thematic work on topics such as homelessness. We’ve used novels such as Feral Kid, documentaries like Somebody Now, picture books such as Way Home as well as poetry and newspaper articles to build up a unit of work. That’s worked quite well. We’ve also studied Looking for Alibrandi.

Macbeth is our Shakespeare study and that’s worked particularly well with all our students here, from those studying English 415 to those working at English 417. I have based the unit around Polanski’s film version of the play, which is entertaining in itself, but I’ve also felt that it has been a very valuable unit of work.
For detailed information about developing a unit, have a look at the planning section of this site.

Evaluation of programs

I know if my classroom is working well if the students are focussed… if they respond to the material. I look for them to be involved and to participate actively in classroom activities. For example, I notice students choosing to read the poetry which is our focus at the moment. Some of students who had previously not been very enthusiastic about reading voluntarily, have been reading the poetry in the displays and saying, 'I like that, can I have a copy?'

When we were studying the Shakespeare unit, one of my students who is working at English 415 asked if she could borrow the story that we had read in class, because she thought her mother would like it. The student said that it was the best story she had ever read. It was actually a version of Macbeth.

So, I think that we can use literature quite successfully with students of a wide range of ability levels. It depends on the teacher's approach to it. I think that it’s really important for teachers to be very enthusiastic about the material they use in the classroom, and that they have a great understanding of the literature itself. Teachers ought to have a wide knowledge of other poems, short stories and plays that they can tie in to make study units interesting. Music can be another important aspect because it adds another dimension to the program.

As teachers we need to know what our students are reading and know how to direct them towards literature that might lead them from that into something perhaps with a little more quality. Also it's important that we have an understanding of their culture and the things that impact on their culture so that we can use that knowledge as triggers for material in our English classes.

I really like the way my classroom is working at the moment because I feel that I’ve achieved something with most of these students; that many of them are more engaged in literature than they’ve perhaps been in previous years; and that many of them have developed some kind of understanding of society through the materials we’ve used - for example texts like Mississippi Burning, and To Kill a Mockingbird. They’ve seen another side to life.

Working collaboratively to develop ideas and resources

I get lots and lots of ideas for my classroom from talking to people like Heather Jatan who is the SCO (English); my partner who’s also an English teacher; and friends who are also teachers. I also use some of the fantastic material that comes out from TATE, as well as just reading as much teenage fiction as I can get my hands on.

This year Heather and I spent quite a bit of time preparing units of work that would be more appropriate for some of the students who will be enrolled in the Year 9 TCE program next year. As part of our ASSR program, we have conducted some literacy tests across the year groups. The results of these tests have indicated that there will be a significant group of students working at literacy levels well below their chronological ages. This has led me to re-think my teaching and learning programs for 1999. I will have to adapt both the materials and the structures in a multi-layered fashion.

A main focus this year has been building up a picture book collection of texts suitable for Years 7, 8, 9 and 10. So, I hope to begin with using our picture book collections to focus on viewing. I intend to use some of the ideas suggested by Quin, McMahon and Quin in their books In the Picture: Reading Visual Language, The Big Picture: Reading Visual Language, and Picture This: Reading Visual Language, published by Curriculum Corporation. I think that will add another dimension to our classrooms next year.

We are aware that we need to prepare materials to help teachers across the curriculum too, because it’s not only in English classes or SOSE classes that these students are going to find the program challenging. Teachers in other learning areas need to be aware of students' levels of literacy so that all programs can be tailored to suit. I guess that’s one of the main things that we’ve worked on this year, so that we’re better prepared for our next Year 9 intake.

Student and teacher resources

We’ve got a fantastic resource room now that’s really well stocked with contemporary novels and sets of books. We’ve spent quite a lot of money this year updating our texts. We have bought sets of books such as Lockie Leonard - Legend, by Tim Winton and A Bridge to Wiseman’s Cove, by James Maloney.

Our picture books have been organised into sets based on criteria such as common author, common themes, common illustrators, and so on. I’ve worked really carefully, putting together not just the texts but lots of units of work appropriate for use with those texts. This means that teachers have a reference section at the beginning of each box of books which includes generic teaching strategies that can be used with any of the texts in the box. I hope that this will be an ongoing program and we’ll keep adding to them over the years, so that we’ve always got the best of the contemporary picture books available.

The other thing that we’ve done is to put together what we think is a fantastic teacher reference collection, so that for every novel in the school we’ve got units of work prepared, which are filed in the teacher resource room. This means that teachers new to the school will be able to find out about the important aspects of the English program here at Claremont High.