I've been having a look at the National Standards online, and was not surprised to see that the Standards are not exempt from perpetuating the new environmental religion disguised under the guise of science. This is from Illustrating the reading standard:
As far as I can tell, this is not a required text for the Standard, but is shown as an example of the type of text that can be chosen. However, when examples are given in these sorts of things they are not arbitrary. They are not chosen by accident.
Imagine, for a moment, if the text was instead a historical investigation of the Crusades, showing how the mythology of the Crusades being bad was influencing our true understanding of the past and why the Crusades were actually neccessary as a defence of the West. Wouldn't that be cool?
UPDATED to add: Or a scientific investigation on why many wealthy countries have too many older people in proportion to the number of children. Even better.
Related link: National Standards Reading and Writing by the End of Year 5
The students in a year 5 and 6 class are involved in a science investigation to discover how environmental causes and human actions have led to many animals becoming endangered and to identify a range of actions that individuals and organisations can take to restore the habitats of these endangered species.
'Plight of the Sea Turtle' deals with the decreasing numbers of sea turtles in the Pacific and describes some initiatives to prevent their extinction. The information is logically organised, and the text is well supported by photos, a map, captions, and easily identified information boxes.
The teacher chose 'Plight of the Sea Turtle' because the text includes a range of features, such as descriptive and explanatory text, factual information, and historical details. These require the students to find and use several pieces of information in order to ask and answer questions about this endangered animal.
This example illustrates aspects of the task and text and demonstrates how a student engages with both task and text to meet the reading demands of the curriculum. A number of such examples would be used to inform the overall teacher judgment for this student.
As far as I can tell, this is not a required text for the Standard, but is shown as an example of the type of text that can be chosen. However, when examples are given in these sorts of things they are not arbitrary. They are not chosen by accident.
Imagine, for a moment, if the text was instead a historical investigation of the Crusades, showing how the mythology of the Crusades being bad was influencing our true understanding of the past and why the Crusades were actually neccessary as a defence of the West. Wouldn't that be cool?
UPDATED to add: Or a scientific investigation on why many wealthy countries have too many older people in proportion to the number of children. Even better.
Related link: National Standards Reading and Writing by the End of Year 5