Verena Watson

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) has published a new literacy assessment—PAT: Punctuation and Grammar. PAT: Punctuation and Grammar has seven tests, aimed at Year 4 to Year 10 students. The tests assess student ability to recognise and use the grammatical conventions of standard New Zealand English, including punctuation.

• Are the tests normed?
• Why aren’t reading ages given in the new tests?
• How can we report to parents?
• Is there a specific test for each year group?
• How can we use the test results to group students for reading?
• Can we put the results into our data management system?
• How often and when should these tests be done?

This article offers a new look at students' comprehension of poetry.  Its findings will be of particular interest to English teachers and teachers working with students to extend their understanding of texts that have complex language features and use figurative language.

• Are the tests normed?
• Why aren't the reading ages given in the new tests?
• How can we report to parents?
• Is there a specific test for each year group?
• How can we use the test results to group students for reading?
• Can we put results into our data management system?
• How often and when should these tests be done?

Explicit teaching and modelling are found to be vital among the strategies used by the teacher in this study to support her Year 5 and 6 students in developing self-regulating writing behaviours.