High School News

The IELTS exams in Israel, Romania and India were the same, according to our friends Y, V and D. Here are the questions they collectively remembered:

Listening test

Section 1. A woman was booking a moving and packing service over the phone. Questions: filling in blanks, phone number, dates and other details.

Section 2. Bushfires in Australia and instructions how to prevent them. Questions: filling in blanks, diagram labeling.

Section 3. Dont remember.

Section 4. The new manager of a company was establishing new rules for employees. Questions: filling in blanks.

Reading test

Passage 1. Airport express comparing information of 3 different types of service. Questions: short-answer questions, True/False/Not Given.

Passage 2. Essential information for people starting a new business from home. Questions: matching paragraphs to letters.

Passage 3. The procedure for getting a company car. Questions: matching paragraphs to headings.

Passage 4. Musical festival at lunchtime. Small article with information about singers. Questions: matching headings to paragraphs.

Passage 5. Exploration of the lost world using underwater mapping techniques and archeology. Questions: filling in blanks, choosing writers opinion.

Writing test

Writing task 1 (a letter)

Your neighbor has animals in the garden that disturb you and your family. Write a letter to the neighbor and say

- What is disturbing you? – How is it affecting you and your family? – Suggest a solution for the current situation. – What will you do in case both of you dont reach an agreement?

Writing Task 2 (an essay)

Some say young people should choose the career they want to follow on their own. Others on the contrary say that the choice should be made by teachers and parents. Discuss both views and give your opinion. Give reasons for your statements and include any relevant examples from your experience.

Speaking test

Interview

- What is your name? – What shall I call you? – Tell me about your town.

Cue Card

Talk about your favorite restaurant. Please say

- Where is it? – What type of food is served there? – Why do you like this place?

Discussion

- Why do people eat out? – Is it healthy to eat out? – Is it a status issue to eat out? – What is your opinion about people with healthy eating habits?

With the clock ticking toward the Feb. 28 second-round deadline for states to apply for a waiver under No Child Left Behind, states are scrambling to glean insight from the first-round results so they can get their proposals in tip-top shape.

You can dig through the voluminous amount of documents that the Education Department posted online from each state, or read their cheat sheet for advice on how to make the outside peer reviewers, and federal officials, happy. (Thanks to the loyal Politics K-12 reader for flagging this document for us, which remains fairly hidden on the department’s website. We always appreciate such tips!)

Here are the biggest flaws in state applications that peer reviewers had concerns about:

• A lack of consultation with relevant stakeholders in creating the waiver proposal. The department requires that states “meaningfully” engage with teachers, unions, parents, and community organizations, and even modify their waiver proposals based on that input. In particular, peer reviewers found that many states did not actively engage with teachers and groups representing English learners and students with disabilities. Still, all states that applied for a first-round waiver (there were 11), except New Mexico, won a waiver.
• Very, very, very weak plans for helping students with disabilities and English learners. The peer reviewers found most states offered weak professional development plans to help teachers prepare special education students and English learners for college- and career-ready standards. The peer reviewers found, for example, that many state plans only included professional development for special education teachers, and not all teachers who teach students with disabilities. In addition, many state plans proposed generic interventions for struggling schools and students, instead of targeted ones aimed at students with disabilities and ELLs. What’s more, the peer reviewers cited “multiple weaknesses” in how states planned to evaluate teachers in those two areas. The weakness in ELL plans has already been detailed by Lesli Maxwell over at Learning the Language.
• New grading systems were complex and difficult for average folks to understand. Politics K-12 wholeheartedly agrees with this one. The peer reviewers were concerned that the indexes, grades, or whatever a state called it included so many factors and calculations that parents and educators would be confused about what matters most in a grade and how it was calculated. The judges were particularly concerned that graduation rates were given the short shrift in these new grading systems.
• Traditional NCLB subgroups were overlooked. This has been a big theme, and concern, as groups have pored over the waiver applications since many states are planning to combine smaller subgroups of at-risk students into one bigger “super subgroup.” The peers were worried that one high-performing bunch in a super-subgroup could mask the low performance of another. The peers wanted to see more safeguards built into plans to ensure that doesn’t happen.
• Significant weaknesses in using annual achievement targets to drive incentives and interventions for schools that are not in the lowest-performing category. Apparently, many states overlooked that other schools besides the worst of the worst may need help, too. Peer reviewers wanted to see states include interventions for schools, for example, where one subgroup was really struggling.
• Vague plans for developing and implementing teacher and principal evaluation systems. Many state plans weren’t specific about how they would choose evaluation measures and how they would be applied uniformly across all school districts, and in non-tested grades and subjects.

A new study by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) has discovered that some 3.8 million children in the UK do not own their own book.

This number is increasing too. Seven years ago just one in ten children did not own their own book while now this number stands at one in three.

Expressing their concern at the findings, the NLA have said that there is a direct correlation between the number of books in a childs home and their reading ability.

The National Literacy Trust director Jonathan Douglas argues that books are an essential element of giving children the best start in life.

“With 1 in 6 in the UK struggling with literacy it is very worrying that many children could be missing out on opportunities to develop these essential skills,” he said.

In response to the report, the NLT has launched a Christmas Gift of Reading fundraising campaign which will give books to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

All week last week we kept hearing about spirit week. There was a Harry Potter Day, some other stuff, and a Bad Teacher Day. They announced them every day. I wondered what the hell Bad Teacher Day was, but I don’t wear costumes to work, so I ignored it. Then some of my colleagues started asking me about it.

“What the hell is Bad Teacher Day? Isn’t that a terrible idea?”

It occurred to me that it was indeed a bad idea, so we started asking various administrators, who were as mystified as we were. Finally we decided to go right to the top, almost, and asked the APO. She looked at us as though we were nuts, and said, “It’s not Bad Teacher Day. It’s Banned T-Shirt Day.”

So we were relieved, somewhat. We told some of the administrators, and then they started getting upset. “Why are we encouraging banned t-shirts? Who knows what sort of things kids will be wearing?”

They were pretty agitated, and we spoke to the to the APO again.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t banned t-shirts, B-A-N-N-E-D. It’s BAND t-shirts, B-A-N-D. You know, you could wear your Led Zeppelin t-shirt.”

I don’t have a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, so it did not fundamentally affect my life style. But it’s amazing how poorly we managed to communicate. I mean, there we were, on verge of a revolution and stuff, and only because a bunch of kids wanted to wear Justin Bieber.

I’ll bet wars have been started over less.