Published: July 18, 2005 | By Caroline Milburn | The Age

Pupils have strong views about which teaching methods work, reports Caroline Milburn.

Completing worksheets and writing thoughts in a diary are some of the most despised classroom activities, according to a survey of pupils in years 5-9.

Giving a talk to the class and listening to other students do so also topped the list of teaching and learning strategies most disliked by children in their middle years of schooling.

Years 5-9, stretching from the senior grades of primary school to the middle years of secondary school, are considered crucial by education experts because they contain the highest levels of student disengagement.

The survey of student learning preferences by Deakin University academics asked students to rate a variety of classroom activities that helped them learn. Being asked "to write my thoughts on what I've learnt in a diary or journal" was the most unhelpful teaching strategy, according to the 7000 students from 50 primary schools and 13 secondary schools surveyed in the study.

The activities students rated as the best included doing investigations or projects of their own choice, being able to choose how they present things and doing activities out of the school. Other categories favoured by students as the most effective ways to learn included doing hands-on activities, watching the teacher demonstrate how to do things, searching and collecting information and asking questions about things that interest them.

One of the study's authors, Professor Russell Tytler, professor of science education at Deakin University, said he was not surprised that worksheets were so unpopular with students. Criticism about teachers failing to vary their teaching methods was one of the biggest student gripes about school.

"What the evidence shows is that a kid going through adolescence needs something that's entertaining, that will engage them, be challenging and allow them to express their opinions," Professor Tytler said. "The way teachers relate to kids needs to be more varied and more sensitive . . . Part of the answer for teachers is to take time in curriculum meetings to talk about teaching strategies, rather than just talking about what topics or equipment is needed."

Primary students were happier about their classroom experiences than secondary pupils. They were much more likely to say they often did tasks that required them to solve problems, the teacher varied their lessons and often involved people from the community.

The survey findings on student learning preferences were part of a larger study, Snapshot of Middle Years Practice, commissioned by the Victorian Education Department to investigate effective teaching methods.

Meanwhile, a co-author of a landmark study on literacy and numeracy teaching to middle-years students, Katie Weir, has told The Age she is disappointed by the response of most state and territory governments to the report's recommendations. The 2003 study, Beyond the Middle, examined the effectiveness of middle-years programs in all states and territories. It revealed a piecemeal approach to reform in literacy, numeracy and assessment practices, with schools scrambling to put together materials from a range of programs of variable quality.

Ms Weir said South Australia and Queensland were the only states so far to have developed a more consistent and coherent approach statewide to the materials and methods used in literacy and numeracy programs. "I haven't seen any specific response to the report at a policy level from most state education departments, even though the report was about them," said Ms Weir, a lecturer in middle-years schooling at Queensland University of Technology.

However, the head of the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission, Viv White, said Victoria's $84 million innovation and excellence initiative, which began in 2003, was a comprehensive middle-years strategy. Under the three-year initiative, all government primary and secondary schools work together in a neighbourhood cluster to develop programs to improve student learning.