Junior Cycle Thesis Topic

roxychix

Hi as part of research topic. How has the junior cycle reformed your teaching, assessment and learning in your classroom and your wider school community

Thanks

History Queen

roxychix wrote: »

Hi as part of research topic. How has the junior cycle reformed your teaching, assessment and learning in your classroom and your wider school community

Thanks

It hasn't. It has given me a healthy distrust of the Department of Education, a loathing of Ruairi Quinn and an increased workload of pointless paperwork.

My teaching and assessment are unaffected except by the pointless exercise that is a CBA and subsequent SLAR .

Icsics

I completely agree with History Queen. I will also add that I am now teaching a little bit of everything & not too much of anything.

TheValeyard

It's created more paper work and time wasting. Teachers know it, students know it.

Cba= couldnt be ars*d


It's making staff very distrustful of the Department JCT, and the SEC.

No point pushing high achievers to reach their potential anymore since its just common level papers in a lot of subject areas. You'd be wasting their time.
Less motivated or willing to co-operate with the endless changes brought by management in relation to the new JC such as SLARS.

rainbowtrout

Well I'm not teaching anything of major substance in science anymore as the heart of the course was torn out.

Well actually the kidneys, the senses, and the skeleton were torn out. Our students are really good at making posters and powerpoints and repeating the science they see on TV, but not a whole lot else.


A friend of mine is trying to bridge the gap in her TY Chemistry classes to prepare her students for LC as they won't have a clue what's going on when they hit fifth year. I suspect other schools will go the same route in time.

dory

Was on a school tour over the weekend and got chatting to TYs about their upcoming results. Were saying it doesn't really matter, a lot of the questions could have been done by a 4 year old (their words). I haven't looked up what they were talking about yet. It was the science paper, they had to read something and answer comprehension type questions. Said it was ridiculously easy.

I'm teaching a subject that will be examined next June. Still no clue what will be on the exam.

rainbowtrout

dory wrote: »

Was on a school tour over the weekend and got chatting to TYs about their upcoming results. Were saying it doesn't really matter, a lot of the questions could have been done by a 4 year old (their words). I haven't looked up what they were talking about yet. It was the science paper, they had to read something and answer comprehension type questions. Said it was ridiculously easy.

I'm teaching a subject that will be examined next June. Still no clue what will be on the exam.

Ya students who were scoring 25-30 in first year with me (old course style questions and knowledge required on the topics they had covered) were scoring 55 when i gave them the SEC sample paper in second year.

I went through the June paper in class about two weeks ago, threw it up on the data projector... no major hassle and we haven't finished the course obviously.

RealJohn

TheValeyard wrote: »

No point pushing high achievers to reach their potential anymore since its just common level papers in a lot of subject areas. You'd be wasting their time.

I don't entirely agree here. Firstly, it's still hard to get the distinction in the common level paper (in my subject anyway), whereas it wasn't so hard to get the A in the old course - the vast majority of As tended to be in the 85-89% range so getting 90% or above is still a significant achievement and one that will not be attained unless the student can answer the higher order questions on the paper (and there are still some of those).

Secondly, there's a part of me that has never been comfortable with the notion of higher level and ordinary level anyway, or the ordinary level component anyway. Either something is important or it isn't. I'd rather see a weak student or especially a lazy student do badly on a common level paper than do 'well' on an ordinary level paper. If there's a level we expect of them, then they shouldn't be rewarded for not reaching it, and an ordinary level paper is a bit like giving out medals for participation, to my mind.
That's not to say that I think weak students should be punished for being weak either, but I think our exams should be measures of knowledge, not exercises in rewarding students for the sake of it.

Of course this attitude is not well suited to our current system, but that's another story.

I agree with the rest of what you said anyway, Valeyard.

solerina

Hasn’t changed my teaching, has changed the level of pointless paperwork I have to get through.
Has also changed the fifth years ability to cope....we are already being warned of high stress levels among fifth years due to workload..they have no greater a workload than any previous fifth year group but they are massively underprepared due to the dumbed down pathetic new JC.