We recently noticed some discussion about the Ministry of Education’s Ready to Read and School Journal series. In this article, we’ll take a look at the School Journal series and, hopefully, clarify understanding.
Check out ‘Better understanding of Ready to Read’.
The School Journal
In 2011, changes were made to the School Journal’s previous four-part structure. The Journals are now aligned to curriculum levels 2, 3, and 4. This change also clarified the “reading year levels” and target audiences for each Journal. (You’ll find detail information about this in Curriculum Update 13 from September 2011.)
Why changes to the School Journal were made
The changes to the structure and levelling of the School Journal were made for a few reasons. These included the need for:
- closer alignment to students’ developing literacy skills and knowledge, as outlined in The Literacy Learning Progressions
- students to use their literacy skills and knowledge to support wider learning tasks across the curriculum (particularly in years 4–8)
- the literacy materials and content to be more closely aligned to the achievement objectives of The New Zealand Curriculum.
These changes were also made because Learning Media (the publisher at that time) and the Ministry realised that teachers needed more certainty about the readability of instructional materials – there needed to be a consistent levelling process, so that teachers could make more accurate judgments about students’ reading progress. At the time, it was noted that the levelling process had not been reviewed in over 20 years, and it needed more rigour and consistency to support teaching and learning.
Reading year level and levelling
Research, undertaken by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Australian Council of Educational Research, found that the concept of “reading age” provided only a rough guide to the complexity of a text, and the term was not a valid way to describe a student’s level of reading expertise. They determined that, from year 4 onwards, reading year level was a better predictor of scale score than age.
The research also looked at the levelling process and proposed some changes. They recommended a levelling process that combines a computer-based readability formula (Dale Chall) with an editorial analysis of text features. The readability formula examines sentence length and familiarity of vocabulary to arrive at a reading year level for the text. This result is adopted as a baseline, which is then moderated by the editorial team against a range of other factors that affect text difficulty.
These factors include:
- the number of unfamiliar ideas and concepts presented in the text
- the complexity of the text’s structure, syntax, vocabulary, and other language features
- the layout, and the support given by illustrations, photographs, and other visual features.
This process leads to a final reading year level that reflects a comprehensive analysis of the text.
Having said all that, teachers are encouraged to balance the indicated levels with their own professional judgment and knowledge of their students’ needs.
Have a question about the purpose or use of School Journals? We want to hear it! Get in touch, or message us on Facebook.
Who we are
As you’ll know, Learning Media, the State-owned Enterprise that published all the Ministry of Education materials, was closed down by the New Zealand Government in 2013. This meant that all materials published by them were put up for tender by the Ministry. Lift Education was awarded the contracts to publish Ready to Read, Junior Journal, School Journal, and School Journal Story Library. Lift (as a provider of publishing services) works closely with the Ministry (as the publisher) continuing a long tradition of providing a wide range of engaging, lively texts that reflect and affirm the identities and cultures of New Zealand’s diverse learners.