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ISSUE 10 April 2011
Using Data
What Works Core Issues Paper 9: Using data to close the gap
This What Works core issues paper is about using evidence to assist in making decisions designed to close the gap in Indigenous student outcomes. Schools are more and more involved in conversations based around data. Two constant themes running through these conversations are improvement and accountability - how can schools can best allocate the resources they control to achieve improved Indigenous student outcomes? Answering this question requires the capacity to interpret and act on evidence about what works. The paper is designed to help build the capacity of schools to take action informed by evidence.
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Using Data to Improve School and Student Literacy and Numeracy Performance
DEEWR National Smarter Schools Parnerships video of Punchbowl Public School in NSW, a school with a small Aboriginal cohort. The video describes the benefits of the using data from a Smarter Schools Literacy and Numeracy National Partnership project.
Link to resource
Completion
Closing the completion gap for Indigenous students
Resource sheet no. 6 for the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse by Sue Helme and Stephen Lamb, January 2011. Research in Australia and overseas points to three broad strategies that have shown to be effective for increasing engagement, achievement and school completion among Indigenous students: building a school culture and leadership that acknowledges and supports Indigenous students and families; school-wide strategies that work to maintain student engagement and improve learning outcomes; student-focused strategies that directly meet the needs of students at risk of low achievement or early leaving
Link to resource
Numeracy
Teaching Number by Building on Students' Strengths: An Investigation in Remote Australian Schools
In this study, 42 Aboriginal children in Grades 3 to 6 were posed a series of related questions on addition and subtraction. The question items were posed in a one-on-one interview situation both in the context of money and with just numbers. The data revealed an alignment between the students’ capacity to work with money and to work with numbers. This implies that money may be a useful context for beginning the development of number understanding and fluency in remote Indigenous contexts. By Peter Sullivan and Peter Grootenboer.
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Literacy
GO LINGO
Premiering on NTIV on 18 April at 10:00 am, GO LINGO is a "high energy game show packed with fun and challenges as students aged between 11-12 play a variety of hi-tech games using the latest in touch screen technology." The games focus on Indigenous Australia - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - their history, culture and their language and incorporates spelling and grammaar in a fun way.
Link to resource
Australian Curriculum
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures cross-curriculum priority
A conceptual framework based on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ unique sense of Identity has been developed as a structural tool for the embedding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures within the Australian curriculum. This sense of Identity is approached through the interconnected aspects of Country/Place, People and Culture. The organising ideas reflecting the essential knowledge, understandings and skills for the priority are described along with how the ideas are embedded in the content descriptions and elaborations of each learning area.
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