Multicultural Literacy Strategies: Combatting Literacy Issues in Stage 1

1. Matthew Luttringer 42442605 EDUC373 Multicultural Literacy Strategies: Combatting Literacy Issues in Stage 1

2. Platypus Primary School • Located in North-Western Sydney, Eastwood • Predominantly low-average SES Public School • 50% English speakers • 40% LBOTE (Mandarin and Indian) • 10% EAL (Mandarin and Indian)

3. Main Objectives • A: communicate through speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing and representing • B: use language to shape and make meaning according to purpose, audience and context

4. Reading and Responding in Stage 1 Curriculum Outcomes Issues Raised In order to recognise these aspects of texts (purpose, audience, subject matter, grammatical features), students must have access to texts which they can understand LBOTE students may not understand language Lower SES students may not have access to texts • Recognises that there are different kinds of texts when reading and viewing and shows an awareness of purpose, audience and subject matter  (EN1-8B) • Uses basic grammatical features, punctuation conventions and vocabulary appropriate to the type of text when responding to and composing texts (EN1-9B)

5. Reading and Responding – Strategies and ICT Tool Effective Strategies Quia Quiz tool Revision on grammatical features, syntax, cloze passages Encourages students to look at the finer features of text, and how the structure of language in any text shapes its meaning Quizzes can be customised to grade level • Dialogic Reading (Markose, Symes& Hellsten, 2011) • Promotes understanding of texts through open questions, discussion prompts, and evaluation of responses • Quia promotes these • Reading for pleasure (Markose, Symes & Hellsten, 2011) • Students must be given access to appropriate texts to promote enjoyment and motivation

6. Quia Web

7. Writing and Representing in Stage 1 Curriculum Outcomes Issues Raised Composition of text requires understanding of the effect of language cues EAL and LBOTE students may not have as good a grasp on language functions in English Use of digital technologies requires access to a computer, which may be a problem for Low SES students • Plans, composes and reviews a small range of simple texts for a variety of purposes on familiar topics for known readers and viewers (EN1-2A) • Composes texts using letters of consistent size and slope and uses digital technologies (EN1-3A)

8. Writing and Representing – Strategies and ICT Tool Effective Strategies My Storymaker Colourful, interactive, engaging site Constructs stories and images based on the emotions, interactions, and characters students wish to represent Scaffolded and strongly supporting (e.g. if a student doesn’t know how to say their character is sad, the program shows them how) • Cognitive Language Development (Bochner & Jones, 2004) • Some language features and cues should be developed with active cognitive effort through explicit teaching • My StoryMaker shows students exactly how a sentence should be written if they wish to display an action or emotion from a character

9. MyStoryMaker

10. Oral Interaction and Presentation in Stage 1 Curriculum Outcomes Issues Raised Bilingual or EAL students may be able to fulfil these outcomes in their home language, but have more trouble in English (Diaz &Harvey, 2007) Low SES students may not see relevance of public speaking skills due to occupation of parents • Communicates with a range of people in informal and guided activities demonstrating interaction skills and considers how own communication is adjusted in different situations (EN1-1A) • Recognises a range of purposes and audiences for spoken language and recognises organisational patterns and features of predictable spoken texts (EN1-6B)

11. Oral Interaction and Presentation – Strategies and ICT Tool Effective Strategies Voki Interactive and engaging text-to-speech tool Students can make an avatar based on the speech they are going to use Can be used to tell the story of the avatar, or the students own story Promotes use of structure in oral presentation and allows students to hear verbal cues in speech • Attempt to assess students on actual presentation skills rather than perfect use of the language (Welch, 2007) • Provide students with simple vocal tasks for practice, such as answering questions or ‘News’ • Focus on teaching structure of response (introduction, opinion, conclusion) rather than perfect grammatical features (Bochner & Jones, 2004) – Voki could be useful

12. Voki

13. Summary – Strategies for Literacy Learning in Stage 1 Strategies Tools Quia Web Useful customisable quiz activities for practicing language features My StoryMaker Interactive story publisher which introduces students to characters and actions Voki Text-to-speech tool which allows students to hear verbal cues in speech • Dialogic Reading and reading for pleasure (Markose, Symes & Hellsten, 2011) • Cognitive Language Development (Bochner & Jones, 2004) • Appropriate assessment and teaching structural understanding (Welch, 2007) (Bochner & Jones, 2004)

14. References • Bochner, S., & Jones, J. (2004). (2nd Ed.) Child Language Development. Learning to talk. London: Whurr Publishers pp. 3-13 • Diaz, C., & Harvey, N. (2007). Other Words, other worlds: Bilingual identities and literacy. In Makin, L., Diaz, C.J., McLachlin, C. Literacies in Childhood: Changing Views, changing practice. Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier. • Markose, S., Symes, C., & Hellsten, M. (in press) ‘In this country education happen at the home’: two families in search of the instruments of appropriation for school success. Language and Intercultural Communication (11), 3, August 2011, 247-267 • Welch, A. (2007) Cultural difference and diversity. In R. Connell, C. Campbell, M. Vickers, A. Welch, D. Foley, & N. Bagnall (Eds) Education Change and Society (pp. 155-187) Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.