Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

School success reverses early damage
An ongoing study follows the same individuals over several decades to investigate how childhood maltreatment – physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect – effects the child’s future and how those that have overcome a bad childhood have done it. Read more

Poor NAPLAN communication reduces parents’ view of value
In a week that’s seen NAPLAN’s writing test criticised as it did not promote clear expression, the program’s communication of results and their implications to parents is being pilloried for a lack of clarity.
Edith Cowan University (ECU) conducted a survey of 345 parents and 40 teachers across Years Three to Five from independent schools in Western Australia found half of parents were dissatisfied with how well student results were communicated. Read more

Boys and girls learn second language differently
Research has found that girls and boys learn second languages differently which might lead to new strategies for teaching which accommodate those differences.
By monitoring neural activity while English sentences were being read, researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University saw that boys tend to show more activation in parts of the brain associated with grammatical rules; girls used a wider range of language information, including speech sounds and meaning of words and sentences. Read more

Kids call the shots on school lunches
There’s no point in snack shaming parents, it's the kids who have the final say in what gets put in school lunch boxes.
A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that children often call the shots on whether they will eat a school lunch or what is packed for their lunch, not their parents. Twenty parents providing a packed lunch for their children (aged 5–11 years) attending four urban primary schools in the UK participated, who submitted to focus groups. Read more

Flexible learning options program saving kids’ futures
Instead of scratching their heads about how to reengage troubled students, Mission Australia has been getting on with things.
Their Flexible Learning Options (FLO) program in South Australia has been a success which could be usefully emulated in other parts of the country. Read more

Film and television school launches free on-line resources for K-10
Video might have killed the radio star but the internet hasn’t displaced video at all, in fact video content is predicted to account for 80% of global internet traffic by next year.
So, video literacy is an essential skill and The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) has launched MEDIA LAB, a free online resource for primary and secondary teachers which helps to teach it. The resource features practical, creative education experiences. Read more

NAPLAN writing test “bizarre” says international expert
Some international perspective on the way NAPLAN's writing test is cast provides some pretty damning criticism of it.
In a report commissioned by the NSW Teachers Federation, retired MIT professor Les Perelman called the test “bizarre” and added that it contributes to bad writing habits as the emphasis is on learning big important sounding words.
Perelman was instrumental in the abandonment of NAPLAN robot marking. Read more