Literacy strategies to support a diverse student population

Sydney Region Public Schools

Literacy strategies to support a

diverse student population

Kim Reid, Quality Teaching Consultant

Debbie Francis, Middle Years Literacy Consultant

Department of Education & TrainingSydney Region, Arncliffe Office

Ph 9582 2800Fax: 9556 3097


What do we mean by:

• Diverse student population diverse: of many different kinds or forms

(assorted, miscellaneous, mixed, motley, various) Macquarie School Dictionary

Differences in culture, gender, race, language, economic status, abilities, interests, experiences etc

• Strategies- instructional / cognitive• Literacy


What is literacy?

• 1.1.1 Literacy is the ability to understand and evaluate meaning through reading and writing, listening and speaking, viewing and representing.

• 1.1.2 Literacy skills need to continually expand and diversify because our rapidly changing social and economic environment requires competence in a range of new communication forms and media.

• 1.1.3 Literacy competence is central to achievement in all areas of learning as students progress through the early, middle and later years of schooling and into the workforce and personal life.

NSW DET Literacy Policy 2007


Literacy teaching

• 1.2.4 Teachers K-12 will develop and continually refine a broad and responsive set of effective literacy teaching practices to meet the diverse learning needs of students

• 1.2.6 Teachers K-12 will allocate sufficient time to explicitly plan, program and teach literacy to ensure students’ achievement of syllabus standards

Literacy Assessing and Reporting

• 1.3.3 Teachers K-12, across all key learning areas are responsible for the teaching and learning of literacy skills, knowledge and understandings

NSW DET Literacy Policy 2007


Subject-Specific Literacy

• Is about planning to systematically develop the literacy skills, knowledge and understandings in

each subject that will support students to achieve the subject outcomes of their current

stage.


Explicit & systematic teaching of literacy strategies in the KLAs

• High correlation between teacher expectation and student performance

• Presenting students with intellectually challenging tasks and encouraging them to extend themselves is essential

• High expectations applies as much to literacy development as to learning in all areas of the curriculum


Explicit teaching

• Explain the purpose, context & value of task• Make links with prior learning• Provide models• Explain task and model processes• Provide positive & informative feedback • Correct errors, provide further modelling or

demonstrations of strategies • Provide opportunities to apply new skills with guidance

& support before expecting students to succeed independently


Systematic teaching

• Having a clear understanding of skills & knowledge that need to be taught

• Plan appropriate sequence of activities

• Break learning into meaningful chunks or scaffold the learning

• Identify literacy demands in content & tasks

• Use repertoire of strategies for teaching literacy

• Monitor students’ progress


Factors that affect the supports and challenges of

any text include:• experiences and knowledge of the students

• cultures of the student

• concepts in the text

• vocabulary

• amount of abstraction and complexity of ideas

• text layout and visual features

• strategies required to read the text

• student’s familiarity with the type of text

• the purposes for which the students are expected to use the text


Helping students to select & read more difficult texts

Extended texts provide• Access to more information presented more

comprehensively

• Models of writing in subject areas

• Practice in reading for different purposes


Strategies to enable all students to access the text

• Previewing activities

• Graphic organisers

• Dictogloss

• Jigsaw

• Reciprocal teaching


Avoiding the perils of assumicide

The death of a book that occurs when teachers assume that students

possess the prior knowledge, connections and motivation to make

higher-level reading possible.

Kelly Gallagher


• The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to the lack of facilities; that is the next step otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon however, it will become just another facet of life.

Read the following passage through once. What is it about??


It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity of this task in the immediate future, but then one can never tell.

After the procedure is complicated one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is a part of life.

Bransford & McCarrell 1974


Analysing text layoutBy previewing texts students can discover a great deal about theme and main idea

• Read titles (headings) and subtitles and say what they mean

• Note any graphics and how they relate to the text

• Read the entire introductory paragraph

• Read and highlight/underline the first sentence (topic sentence) of each subsequent paragraph

• Read the entire concluding paragraph

• State the main idea or the gist of the whole textTeaching Strategies Linking ELLA 2006 to the

Curriculum EMSAD


Analysing text layout

For students who need more support:

• What words are in bold? Why?• What words are in the largest print? Why?• What is written in italics? Why?• What do the diagrams and other graphics have to do with

the topic?• What print do the diagrams and other graphics connect

with?• Read the captions under the graphics. What information do

they give?• Write the titles of the subsections. What is each one about?


Graphic Organisers: What are they?

Visual representations of concepts designed to represent key ideas and their relationships… Arrows and symbols are typically used to

represent relationships. Information is organised around a word or

phrase.

Bindon & Santeusanio (2006)


Graphic Organisers: Why use them?

They can help students to improve: • Retention and recall• Comprehension• Vocabulary knowledge• Critical thinking skills• Note-taking capacities• Ability to select and organise information

They also:• Show how concepts and facts are related• Transform understanding of concepts & ideas into

concrete, visual forms• Make links between what is known and what is to be

learned• Develop a capacity to reflect on their thinking & learning


Sub-headings

INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC

CLEARNING OF THE FORESTS

Caption tells us:

Caption tells us:

FOREST ISLANDS

Caption tells us:

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

What is it about?

Activities Questions to answer from

the information on the page

GEOskills Activities linked to map

on page 182

OTHER SECTIONS

What is it about?

Photo of Map of

What is it about?

What is it about?

Two diagrams & captions that explain

Photo of

Main Heading: FOREST HABITATS AND DEFORESTATION

Cathy Welsford Accelerated Literacy


Dictogloss

What is its purpose? • To introduce key words at the beginning of a work sequence • To provide students with practice in using subject specific

vocabulary and standard English• To develop effective listening strategies • To provide practice in extracting key information from a text • To provide students with the opportunity to clarify ideas not

understood in a text • To develop proof reading and editing strategies • To provide an authentic opportunity for cooperative learning• To encourage students to process new information


Dictogloss

How do I do it? • Find a suitable text - usually one that is short and cohesive • Divide the class into groups. • Ask students to write down the key words as the text is

read. (Teachers might need to read the text more than once.)

• Have students work in cooperative groups to recreate the text.

• Groups proof read and edit their texts before presenting them to the class in spoken or written form.

• Students compare their texts with the original, attempting to justify the differences between them.


Jigsaw

What is it?• Jigsaw is a co-operative learning structure

that promotes the sharing and understanding of ideas or texts.

What is its purpose? • Jigsaw facilitates learning in two areas; the

social skills of positive interdependence and equal participation and the academic skill of acquiring knowledge and understanding.


JigsawHow do I do it? (Class of 32)• Divide the class into groups depending on the

number of sections of text to be read (eg 4 groups: group 1, 2, 3 ,4 of 8 students: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H )

• Distribute 8copies of each section to the 4 groups (label each copy A, B, C, D, E, F, G,H)

• Each student reads and processes their text then discusses and clarifies meaning with their group in order to become experts in their section

• Students move into their letter groups A, B, C etc(8 groups of 4 students) and take turns to inform thegroup about their section and so the jigsaw parts fit together


Jigsaw reading task

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4

group A group B group C group D…

• Become an expert in your section• Share your expert knowledge with a new group, so

everyone has a sense of the whole article


RECIPROCAL TEACHINGPalincsar & Brown (1984)

What is it?

• an instructional model that emphasizes teaching students key cognitive reading comprehension strategies for predicting, clarifying, summarizing, and questioning in the context of authentic text.


Predicting• Are there any clues? What is it about?

• Students survey the text or ‘flip read’ to look for clues eg paragraphing, print changes, illustrations, diagrams, lay out

• Each student makes a prediction about the content of the text based on the clues

Clarifying• Clear it up- making sense of what you read

• The leader : “Is there any thing that needs clearing up, or clarifying?” “Can any one help?”

• The group share their knowledge and problem solving strategies


Questioning

• Students are asked to pose questions and answer each others questions about the text

• The leader asks a maximum of five questions

Summarising• Say it in your own words, getting the gist

• Ultimately each group member in turn summarises the text with the leader taking the last turn.

• Students work at their own level, the student needing support has the opportunity to hear a range of opinions


Strategies to use as you read

PREDICTWhat do you think the text is about?Look at the title, pictures, captions, headings, subheadings, topic sentences, key words

READNote any words you do not understand.

CLARIFYAre there any words you do not understand? Ask a student, use a dictionary, atlas, thesaurus or ask a teacher.

QUESTIONMake sure everything you read makes sense. Re-readWho? When? Why? How? Where? What?Do you have any questions?

SUMMARISERetell the main ideas in your own words.RememberWho? When? Where? What?Why? How? Were your predictions correct? What do you think will happen next?


WRITING

Demonstrate knowledge of a range of literacy strategies to meet the needs of all students

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Is

Special needs

NESB

Challenging behaviours


WRITING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

• Diverse• Complex• Academically demanding

More demanding writing tasks to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the curriculum


What influences performance in writing?

• language exposure and background

• quantity quality and type of writing instruction provided by teachers


• Accepted historical ‘belief’ about Arthur is often dependent upon the period in which the historian lived and wrote. For example the great majority of Historians throughout the nineteenth century essentially dismissed Arthur as a minor king of the Britons who was crushed by the Saxons. The twentieth century by contrast, would see some academics place Arthur in an entirely different spectrum of history not as a Celt but instead as a Roman Officer. One such academic of this opinion is historian R.G Collingwood[1] who describes Arthur as in command of a cavalry unit which fought against the Saxons to “preserve the Roman character of the Island”[2].

• Supporting Collingwood’s theory, archaeologist Leslie Alcock [3] sought to take this line of thinking further claiming that more than an army officer Arthur was a “major warlord”[4] not only attributing Arthur with the responsibility for victories in both the battles of Badon and Camlann[5] but also firmly establishing dates on which these victories occurred. [1] R.G Collingwood, Roman Britain and the English Settlements

• [2] R.G Collingwood, Roman Britain and the English Settlements• [3] Leslie Alcock, Arthurs Britain” (1982• [4] Leslie Alcock (1971)• [5] Two battles that Arthur was supposed to have fought heroically in


What is involved in providing writing programs for students?

• Transcription

• Spelling


Specific groups – ATSI, NESB etc

chronic writing problems will develop without

intensive

explicit

modeled

writing instruction


What are the problems?

• Don’t know how to construct a text for a specific purpose

• Recognise quality writing but don’t understand features which delineate poor and high quality writing

• Poor topic knowledge• Impoverished vocabulary• Handwriting spelling grammar punctuation


ATTITUDES and VALUES

• Lack motivation

• Lack persistence

• Repeated failure


What can be done ?

• Authentic writing tasks

• Explicit teaching of the elements of writing

• Models – how to do it - expectations


• Opportunities to learn the elements of writing from models and to craft texts

• Focusing on mastering particular elements


Target groups

• Additional instruction

• Self regulation and monitoring


External judgements

NAP 10 writing criteria

• Audience

• Text structure

• Ideas

• Character and setting

• Vocabulary

• Cohesion

• Paragraphing

• Sentence structure

• Punctuation

• Spelling

Criteria marked on a scale – students in target groups may be scoring 2 or 3 out of 5


PARALLEL TO THE SYLLABUS CONTENT

• Establish the writing demands of the lesson / task/ unit

• Consider the support that specific needs groups will require to successfully complete the activity

PLAN FOR IT TEACH IT


WHAT?

Deconstruct models - model the written response you want and discuss and describe how the model answer has been constructed.

Ask students to use the features you have discussed and described in their own response

AND identify them!


• Small manageable pieces of writing

• Start with mastery of a few sentences

• Encourage practise, drafting and editing- needs to be taught.


Spelling and punctuation count but writing is about informing, entertaining, persuading etc an audience

WHAT DO I WRITE ?- purpose

HOW DO I WRITE IT ? sentences paragraphs vocabulary cohesive language


POST IT NOTES personalise instruction in writing for students with specific needs

Literacy strategies to support a diverse student population

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