School Journal editor Susan Paris talks about the School Journal series and how using stories with similar themes can support teachers in the classroom.
The School Journal has been around for over a hundred years.
It’s come a long way from the early days, when issues were regularly dedicated to Empire and the Dominion, and has graciously weathered decades of change. (You can read more about this in Gregory O’Brien’s excellent history of the School Journal, A Nest of Singing Birds.)
Part of the journal’s story of survival has been its ability to adapt.
Each decade of publication has reflected the changing times – be it a world war, new education policies, or the experimental 1970s. In recent times, journal editors have had a new focus: meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. As a core part of the Ministry’s instructional series, the journal has to work in every New Zealand classroom, engaging every kind of reader – no matter what their interests or background. The ultimate challenge!
Satisfying this audience is easy enough with fiction.
Using a wide range of authors guarantees that students will be exposed to different voices and experiences. Using a selection of authors generally works with non-fiction too, though to a lesser extent. Commissioning articles across the curriculum also provides variety, but there’s another option: revisiting the same idea through thematically related texts.
At first, the idea of repetition sounds counterintuitive.
But as most teachers know, thoroughly exploring a topic allows the time for engagement with multiple perspectives, especially when it comes to the social sciences curriculum. Archie Baxter had a reason to protest; so did Te Whiti (look for articles in the March 2012 and May 2016 level 4 journals). Their stories came forty years apart, yet both men made a stand through passive resistance. Because these articles explore more than one experience, using them side by side encourages a deeper understanding of protest in New Zealand and its history.
It makes sense for journal content to be linked.
So far, we’ve had great feedback about this approach. Over the last few years, recurring topics have included moa, gardening, gold mining, New Zealand history, the arts, and astronomy. Coming soon – Mars. Some of this related material has been in the same journal; some in different journals. Some topics have jumped between levels and occasionally between series (for example, there’s a useful trail to be followed between ‘The Science of Rongoā’ in the level 3 Connected 2015, ‘Rongoā Māori’ in Junior Journal 48, and ‘Tohunga’ in the level 3 School Journal November 2014). The School Journal and School Journal Story Library have also had some great conversations.
Related content in the journal is broadly organised.
The possibilities for inquiry topics are endless, whether teachers are working with the foundation principles at the front of the curriculum or choosing curriculum-based ideas. When planning up-coming articles, being overly specific seems the greater danger than taking a broad approach. We know you’ll find a way to relate the material to your teaching programs and students’ interests.
While potential topics are never-ending, there are practical constraints.
The Ministry of Education publishes eight School Journals a year (three each at levels 2 and 3, and two at level 4). This means a limit on how many topics can be covered as well as how far each topic can be taken. But given that all texts in the instructional series are a gateway, teachers will have their own ideas about the best resources students can consult next.
You can now find instructional series content thematically on the Ministry’s website by using the ‘search’ function.
Doing so will give you a broader sense of what’s available. A search on “history” in the School Journal, for example, will provide the following for starters:
- Following Gold by Chris Tse (level 3 May 2015)
- Bright Fine Gold by Mark Derby (level 3 May 2015)
- Bok Choy by Paul Mason (level 3 May 2015)
- Kauri Island by Amy Head (level 4 November 2014)
- Family Photographs by Alison Wong (level 4 October 2015)
- Six Photographs by Dylan Owen (level 3 August 2016)
- Wining’s Wairau by Jenny Bornholdt (level 3 November 2014)
- Kurī by Priscilla Wehi (level 2 October 2015)
- Captain Cook: Charting Our Islands by Melanie Lovell-Smith (level 4 May 2016)
- Ngā Tātarakihi o Parihaka by Lucy Bailey (level 4 May 2016)
Be sure to check out the Ministry of Education’s updated website, where you can now find texts in the instructional series by searching for theme.
Image credit: The Picture Garden