Lawson Primary School

1. Lawson Primary School Staff Meeting: Year 3 (S2) Literacy Issues facing students from diverse backgrounds Presenting: Diva Sinwari & Lauren Martinson

2. Issues to Address

3. Why do we need to change? Significant changes in the demographic makeup of our country are occurring, therefore a teacher reform is in order. We need to think of what we are teaching and why we are teaching it. The evolving world presents us with the need to learn and commuicate on many fronts, the prospects for a multicultural education are here. We must realise that that ESL teacher education should be integrated in classroom settings and in teacher preparation programs such as this one. Tedick, J. D & Walker, C. L.(1994). Second language teacher education: the problems that plague us. The modern language journal. Vol. 0026-7902(94)p. 300-312.

4. Goals • A key goal of this presentation, as supported by specialists in this field is to reform the school so that students from diverse, racial, ethnic groups will experience educational equality (Banks, 1993). • This can be achieved through differentiating the curriculum to cater for each child’s needs • Strong collaborative relationships with families is key • Banks, A. (1993). Multicultural education: historical development, dimensions, and practice. Review of research in education. Vol. 19, p.3-49.

5. How to differentiate the curriculum Classrooms of today are defined by academic diversity. By 2035, students of colour will be the majority in our schools with increasing populations of children of immigrant families, thus expanding the presence of cultural diversity. The goal of ‘differentiation’ is for the teacher to ensure that every student learns effectively. This presents us as teachers with difficult pedagogical dilemmas. Therefore, a transformation is in order. As classrooms are constantly evolving, teachers will have to learn how to develop classroom routines that attend to (not ignore) learner differences.

6. Differentiation cont… Differentiation is a pedagogical, rather than organisational approach. Differentiation can be defined as an approach to teaching in which teachers proactively modify the curriculum, teaching methods, resources, learning activities and student products to address the diverse needs of individual students to maximise learning opportunities. Instruction should be in advance of the child’s current level of mastery. Teachers should teach within a child’s ZPD. If material is presented above the ZPD children will become confused and frustrated (this is common throughout multicultural classrooms). Tomlinson, C. A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C., Moon, T. R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L. A & Reynolds, T. (2003). Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse classrooms: a review of literature. Journal for the education of the gifted. Vol. 27(2/3) p.119-145.

7. Cooperative Reading Strategies It is proven that proficient literacy in a second language can be achieved when peers engage in interactions and cooperatively negotiate meaning and shared understanding. –Olusola. A, 2011. Dyad reading- includes cooperative read aloud exercises involving a lead reader, who is able to read well, and an assisted reader, who does not read as well. This cooperative peer-assisted reading strategy ‘allows the sharing of reading experiences among students. This strategy has shown to improve the reading fluency and comprehension of assisted readers. Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) -used for comprehensive reading and writing instruction for students. CIRC includes story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and other reading activities. The strategy involves assigning students to four-member heterogeneous learning teams that work on different cooperative activities, including: peer reading, identification of major elements in a story, summarizing of stories, activities geared towards practice of reading comprehension strategies (e.g., spelling, decoding, and vocabulary), and creative writing .The process also includes teacher instruction, team practice and peer assessment. Olusola, O. A., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2011). Pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy to ESL immigrant students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology . 81, 629-653

8. Systematic phonics and guided reading Systematic phonics instructions- learners are taught how to read and write using the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. Phonics instruction helps beginner readers understand how letters (graphemes) are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences. This strategy also helps beginner readers develop competence in spelling. Olusola, O. A., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2011). Pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy to ESL immigrant students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology . 81, 629-653

9. Multimedia-assisted reading strategies Captioned television- Literacy skills among beginning learners can be improved by viewing television programmes with captions. Such captioned programmes can create a rich multi-sensory learning environment by allowing students to hear the words, see the words as captions, and experience the contextual meaning of the words by watching the images on the television. Audio taped or read-along instructional materials- allow students to listen to stories on audio tapes while concurrently reading the stories in the accompanied book. This approach can help students learn to associate the spoken words with the printed words, thus enriching the students’ vocabulary and word recognition. Another multimedia program used to enhance the reading ability of non-English learners is Fast ForWordTM. This computer program is designed for students whose reading ability falls below their grade levels. The program includes exercises in perceptual and spoken language comprehension designed to facilitate the development of language skills, especially communicative competence. Olusola, O. A., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2011). Pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy to ESL immigrant students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology . 81, 629-653

10. Banks, A. (1993). Multicultural education: historical development, dimensions, and practice. Review of research in education. Vol. 19, p.3-49. Dooley, K. (2008). Multiliteracies and pedagogies of New Learning for Students of English as additional language. Multiliteracies and Diversity in Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Douglas, W. (2002). Seven Literacy Strategies That Work. Educational Leadership. (60) 3, p70-73. Gibbons, P. (2008). “It was taught good and I learned a lot.” Intercultural practices and ESL games in the middle years. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 31 (2) 155-173 Olusola, O. A., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2011). Pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy to ESL immigrant students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology . 81, 629-653 Sitko, M.B. (1998). Knowing how to write: metacognition and writing instruction. Metacognition in education theory and practice. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. 95-115 Tedick, J. D & Walker, C. L.(1994). Second language teacher education: the problems that plague us. The modern language journal. Vol. 0026-7902(94)p. 300-312 Tomlinson, C. A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C., Moon, T. R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L. A & Reynolds, T. (2003). Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse classrooms: a review of literature. Journal for the education of the gifted. Vol. 27(2/3) p.119-145.